I had some difficulties playing Flash videos lately. Problems ranged from lagging sound, to ugliness, to idling black screens, to strange gray Play buttons that didn't do anything. The following solved my Flash issues on Ubuntu.

A very short & simple article this time.

You could take the graphical approach (use Synaptic & visit Adobe site), but I'm using commandline cause copy-pasting is really fast and concise, so here we go:

Cleanup

Open a terminal and type:

sudo echo -n "Cleaning up... "
sudo aptitude purge swfdec-mozilla
sudo aptitude purge adobe-flashplugin
sudo echo "[done]"

Install Adobe Flashplayer 10 on Ubuntu

Open a terminal and type:

sudo echo -n "Downloading... "
cd /tmp
wget http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/install_flash_player_10_linux.deb
sudo echo "[done]"
sudo echo -n "Installing... "
sudo aptitude install libcurl3
sudo dpkg -i ./install_flash_player_10_linux.deb
sudo echo "[done]"

That's it

Restart Firefox and go & enjoy some Youtube videos again : )

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tags: ubuntu, flash, video, flv
category: Howto - Desktop
read: 38,948 times

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Comments

#24. ShinIori319 on 05 November 2011

Nice thing, this might help. Except for the "echo" command, lol.
That is, unless you copy/paste this into a shell script.

#23. starkiez on 06 August 2011

Hey thanks for this, but I found that installing kubuntu-restricted-extras made the flash work perfectly. I hope this helps

#22. Blake on 25 April 2011

Thank you so very much!

#21. Kevin on 04 March 2011

@ Roland: Thanks for sharing

#20. Roland on 21 February 2011

For ubuntu 10.10 almost valid, too. The packages have different names, and aptitude is not installed in default setup

Uninstall:

sudo apt-get purge flashplugin-installer libswfdec-0.8-0

(if gloobus-preview is installed, don't purge libswfdec)

Download is almost the same, just replace aptitude with apt-get.

Thanks for pointing the direction!

#19. hipnas on 09 November 2010

Perfect!!! Thanks :)

#18. Brian on 18 September 2010

Thank you so much! Worked perfectly with no issues. <thumbs up>

#17. Max on 23 June 2010

Thank you. Your solution worked for me.

#16. Kevin on 10 June 2010

@ blues: Not yet, still on 32bits here.

@ amac: Thanks a lot for sharing!

@ Jack Henderson: Glad it worked out!

#15. Jack Henderson on 05 June 2010

Thanks, man. Flash problems have been a thorn in my side for months, and yours is the first "solution" I've found that actually works! :)

#14. amac on 27 May 2010

Thanks a bunch. Of course, on run of dpkg (above) the root cause of my particular problem still bit me. There was a conflict with the existing flashplugin-installer. But, that was solved with:

sudo aptitude purge flashplugin-installer

followed by a rerun of dpkg and everything was fine after that.

#13. blues on 21 May 2010

Hi,
I noticed that the installation package is only for 32-bit systems. Any chance you might know and post the url for the 64-bit package?

#12. Kevin on 24 April 2010

@ gurpreet: Sometimes the copy-pasting fails if it asks for a password. Make sure all commands are executed.

#11. gurpreet on 12 April 2010

HI, i was suggested your link in ubuntu forum, http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1356599, hmm did not work for me.... this fix, that you've mentioned is that for the same problem as is being seen in this thread. would be very kind of you, if you can have a look at this thread...

#10. Daniel Cunningham on 12 April 2010

Hi Kevin:

I also cross-posted your solution onto some of the Ubuntu user forums. Seems a lot of folks were having similar problems. Thanks again.

#9. Daniel Cunningham on 12 April 2010

Hi Kevin:

I'm a long-time (8+year) user of Ubuntu. Currently using (latest) version 9.10. Followed your steps, and it worked like a charm. Thanks VERY much for a useful procedure!

I think one of the reasons your procedure is so useful is that it fixes one of the "little" (but also quite common) problems that can happen with Ubuntu. It's not like playing the latest videos is SUPER-critical, but when you know the same videos can play on a Mac or even a M$ Window$ system, it's a little... annoying.
... [more]
And problems like this can baffle non-technical users (heck, even I was sort of "ignoring" it until I crossed an "annoyance threshold"). So, if Ubuntu is to gain more mainstream acceptance, they need to have very simple & straightforward fixes for the standard set of "annoyance" problems that occur. And... these fixes need to be able to be followed by less than uber-geeky (i.e. non-technically inclined) persons.

Now, for a technical question: why do you think the process work? In other words, what is wrong with the codec components we replaced, and what is better about the ones we used? And is there a way to let the Ubuntu world get the "best" set of the components right "out of the box" (or ISO/install, if you prefer)?

Best regards,

-- Daniel Cunningham

#8. Kevin on 21 February 2010

Glad it works out for you guys!

#7. Marion on 07 February 2010

I am very glad now it work the Flashplugin on Ubuntu 8.10 perfect. Thanks a lot !!!

#6. MIke on 04 February 2010

Thanks you very much, your solution fix my case

#5. Matthew on 13 December 2009

Thanks man, I was having problems getting flash to work for any extending period of time. Thanks for your solution, its working great!

#4. Enzo on 08 June 2009

Dude, thank you! This has been bothering me since I've changed my hard drive. I was beginning to think it was faulty hardware.

Thanks again

-Enzo

#3. Sam on 30 May 2009

Nice solution... works great! (Ubuntu 9.04)

#2. Kevin on 22 May 2009

@ gavin: Personally I already had that package installed but I'll update the article as this may happen to others as well. Thanks for sharing!

#1. gavin on 21 May 2009

Worked, aside from one speedbump:

dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of adobe-flashplugin:
 adobe-flashplugin depends on libcurl3; however:
  Package libcurl3 is not installed.
dpkg: error processing adobe-flashplugin (--install):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
 adobe-flashplugin

I did `sudo apt-get install libcurl3`, then `sudo dpkg -i ./install_flash_player_10_linux.deb`