SillyDog701

[iJohnE]

guess you've heard the good news, that Adobe released yesterday (November 17th, 2008) the first 64-bit version of its Flash Player for Linux-based operating systems.

Until yesterday, 64-bit Linux users had to install the 32-bit version of the Flash Player, which was forced to work with the help of the NSPlugin wrapper package. Moreover, the "grey box" issue in Firefox 64-bit for the Ubuntu 8.10 AMD64 (Intrepid Ibex) operating system is a known and unresolved problem, as is also the fact that users had to reload the web pages to see the flash content, or even to restart Firefox. The following guide is here to teach you how to replace the 32-bit version of the flash player with the 64-bit one, on Ubuntu 8.10 AMD64. It will work with other 64-bit Linux distributions.

OK, so let us get down to business, and replace that ugly 32-bit flash player installation from your Ubuntu 8.10 AMD64 edition with the just released 64-bit version.

What do I need to get started? You will need to download the 64-bit Adobe Flash Player from Softpedia. Save the file on your desktop.

WARNING: Close any opened window of the Firefox browser before you continue! Open this page in Opera, Epiphany or any other browser.

STEP 1 - Remove the 32-bit flash player

You must remove the existing installation of the 32-bit flash player before installing the 64-bit one. Go to System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager...




When Synaptic is ready, just type "nsplugin" (without quotes) in the search box. It will immediately find the package. Click on the green box in front of the "nspluginwrapper" package, and select the "Mark for Complete Removal" option...



You will also be notified about the removal of the "flashplugin-nonfree" package. Click on the "Mark" button...




Now, click on the "Apply" button; a confirmation window will appear, click "Apply," and wait for the packages to be removed from your system. Close Synaptic when it finishes the removal of the 32-bit flash player packages.

STEP 2 - Install the 64-bit flash player

Extract the archive of the 64-bit flash player and you will end up with a "libflashplayer.so" file...



Now, open your Home folder, go to View -> Show Hidden Files to view the hidden files...




Enter the .mozilla folder and create a new directory called "plugins" (without quotes). Drag and drop the "libflashplayer.so" file from the desktop to the "plugins" folder...




STEP 3 - Verify the installation of the 64-bit flash player

You can safely open the Firefox web browser, and go to YouTube or any other website with flash content. Try to watch a movie. Eureka! It works!

I will be testing this when I get home. It looks to me, that it currently only works with Firefox, and possibly SeaMokney. Judging from the comments from users over at Softpedia, it seems to work quite well.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.7) Gecko/2009021910 Firefox/3.0.7

[iJohnE]

It works! Yup, I am running flash on a 64-Bit system. And it was easy!

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.3) Gecko/2008101315 Ubuntu/8.10 (intrepid) Firefox/3.0.3

[peterson]

I Worked first time even though i forgot to close firefox when following install instructions. It works like a magic.Thank you very much for providing ubuntu software support.Flash finally working fine on my 64-bit ubuntu.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20091020 Ubuntu/9.10 (karmic) Firefox/3.5.8 GTB7.1

[iJohnE]

Yeah. only problem is Adobe has no closed development of 64-bit flash. So it's going to be a while until we have a native version.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US) AppleWebKit/533.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/5.0.375.38 Safari/533.4

[Edward]

I am still using the beta version of the 64-bit plugin for Linux on my other machine.

Something relating to HTML 5 is being developed for video, see http://www.html5video.org/ for some details.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.11) Gecko/20100701 SeaMonkey/2.0.6

[iJohnE]

How well is the beta working still? Have you run into some problems?

Personally, I've kinda ditched the 64-bit kernel, and have opted for the i686 architecture with the PAE kernel. Allows me access to all of my ram. I could possibly gain a speed boost or performance increase from the native 64-bit but I don't think it'd be worth it for me.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.8) Gecko/20100723 Ubuntu/10.04 (lucid) Firefox/3.6.8

[Edward]

I've had no problems at all with the 64-bit beta plugin, or 64-bit Linux.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1.11) Gecko/20100701 SeaMonkey/2.0.6

[iJohnE]

That's awesome Edward. I might be getting a new hard drive, and if I do then I'll install the AMD64 build of Ubuntu. Even though I can't use the Ubuntuzilla on it.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.8) Gecko/20100723 Ubuntu/10.04 (lucid) Firefox/3.6.8

[Edward]

I actually tried the latest 32-bit Linux Flash plugin under 64-bit Linux and found that with SeaMonkey and Firefox, it did not work, so I fell back to the beta 64-bit plugin.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1.11) Gecko/20100701 SeaMonkey/2.0.6

[iJohnE]

For me it worked, however I couldn't interact with the controls in it. Which is completely useless, if my opinion.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.8) Gecko/20100723 Ubuntu/10.04 (lucid) Firefox/3.6.8

[Edward]

The browsers displayed a banner that additional plugins were required to view the page, which would have been the 64-bit plugin, it didn't recognize the 32-bit, even though it was in the .mozilla/plugins directory.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.11) Gecko/20100701 SeaMonkey/2.0.6

[Edward]

To update this thread, more recently, Adobe has released 64-bit Linux plugins for Flash and they work perfectly on my PC's running Debian 6 (Squeeze).

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; rv:8.0.1) Gecko/20111121 Firefox/8.0.1 SeaMonkey/2.5