How to install the 64-bit Adobe Flash Player 10 for Linux in Ubuntu Linux?
So you just read the announcement from Adobe for the alpha version of the 64-bit Flash Player 10 for Linux and you want to install in Ubuntu Linux?
Here is how to do it.
- First, we understand that the flashplugin-nonfree package that is currently available to those with 64-bit Ubuntu Linux, installs the 32-bit version of Flash and uses the nspluginwrapper tool to make it work.
- After some time, I expect that the flashplugin-nonfree will stop using nspluginwrapper and will simply install Adobe Flash Player 10 (64-bit) for Linux. So you need to have a look in your package manager and the package description in case flashplugin-nonfree has already been updated. If flashplugin-nonfree has been updated, stop reading now.
- Close Mozilla Firefox.
- Uninstall the flashplugin-nonfree package using your package manager, or simply running sudo apt-get remove flashplugin-nonfree
- Download the alpha version of the 64-bit Adobe Flash Player 10 for Linux and extract the file from the archive. You will get a libflashplayer.so file, which is about 10MB is size.
- If you want all users in your system to have this alpha version of Adobe Flash Player 10 for Linux, copy the libflashplayer.so file to /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/. The command is sudo cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/
- If you want just the current user to try out the Flash player, copy the libflashplayer.so file to /home/yourUSERNAME/.mozilla/plugins/. The command is cp libflashplayer.so ~/.mozilla/plugins/
- Check that in ~/.mozilla/plugins/ there is no dormant file with the name npwrapper.libflashplayer.so. A common issue with people who migrate their profiles is to perform a simply copy of the profile. The effect of this is sometimes there is an actual file called npwrapper.libflashplayer.so instead of a symbolic link. The result is that these people would end up using some old buggy version of nspluginwrapper which might be the cause of Firefox crashes! When you backup, use cp -a, so symbolic links remain symbolic links.
- You can now start Mozilla Firefox. Visit about:plugins and verify that the version of Flash is something like Shockwave Flash 10.0 d20. Make sure there is no remnant of any other previous Flash player.
- If you want to return back to the 32-bit Flash Player with emulation, remove the file we just added and install again the flashplugin-nonfree package.
The instructions for other distributions should be fairly similar.
How to easily modify a program in Ubuntu (updated)?
Some time ago we talked about how to modify easily a program in Ubuntu. We gave as an example the modification of gucharmap; we got the deb source package, made the change, compiled, created new .deb files and installed them.
We go the same (well, similar) route here, by modifying the gtk+ library (!!!). The purpose of the modification is to allow us to type, by default, all sort of interesting Unicode characters, including ⓣⓗⓘⓢ , ᾅᾷ, ṩ, and many more.
The result of this exercise is to create replacement .deb packages for the gtk+ library that we are going to install in place of the system libraries. Because these new libraries will not be original Ubuntu packages, the update manager will be pestering us to rollback to the official gtk+ packages. This is actually good in case you want to switch back; you will have the enhanced functionality for as long as you postpone that update.
There is a chance we might screw up our system, so please make backups, or have a few drinks first and come back. I take no responsibility if something bad happens on your system. If you are having any second thoughts, do not follow the next steps; use the safer alternative procedure. You may try however this guide just for the kicks; up to the dpkg command below, no changes are being made to your system.
We use Ubuntu 7.10 here. This should work in other versions, though your mileage may vary.
The compilation procedure takes time (about 30 minutes) and space. Make sure you use a partition with >2GB of free space. We are not going to use up 2GB (a bit less than 1GB), but it’s nice not to fill up partitions.
We are going to use the generic instructions on how to recompile a debian package by ducea.
First of all, install the development packages,
sudo apt-get install devscripts build-essential
Next, we use the apt-get source command to get the source code of the GTK+ 2 library,
cd /home/ubuntu/bigpartition_over2GB/apt-get source libgtk2.0-0
We then pull in any dependencies that GTK+ may require. They are normally about a dozen packages, but we do not have to worry for the details.
apt-get build-deplibgtk2.0-0
At this stage we need to touch up the source code of GTK+ before we go into the compilation phase. Visit the bug report #321896 – Synch gdkkeysyms.h/gtkimcontextsimple.c with X.org 6.9/7.0 and download the patch (look under the Attachment section). You should get a file named gtk-compose-update.patch. If you have a look at the patch, you will notice that it expects to find the source of gtk+ in a directory called gtk+. Making a link solves the problem,
ln -s libgtk2.0-0 gtk+
We then attempt to apply the patch (perform a dry run), just in case.
patch -p0 --dry-run < /tmp/gtk-compose-update.patch
If this does not show an error message, you can the command again without the –dry-run.
patch -p0 < /tmp/gtk-compose-update.patch
Finally, we are ready to build our fresh GTK+ library.
cd libgtk2.0-0debuild -us -uc
This will take time to complete, so go and do some healthy cooking.
At the end of the compilation, if all went OK, you should have about a dozen .deb files created. These are one directory higher (do a “cd ..“). To install, use dpkg,
dpkg -i *.deb
If you have any other deb files in this directory, it’s good to move them away before running the command. If all went ok, the .deb files should install without a hitch.
The final step is to restart your system. To test the new support, see the last section at this post. Use Firefox and OpenOffice.org to type those Unicode characters.
If you managed to wade through all these steps, I would appreciate it if you could post a comment.
Good luck!
