Opera, Flash and Ubuntu (Feisty Fawn, Gutsy Gibbon and Hardy Heron also)

Tuesday, 18th Mar 2008 at 18:28 (administration, linux, ubuntu)
Tags: Feisty Fawn, flash, Gutsy Gibbon, Hardy Heron, opera, plugin, ubuntu

Note 08/01/08: There have been issues after the original plugin has been updated. See Ubuntu Forum, Bug description (workaround or fixed deb for firefox only which is version 9.0.115!) or comments below for more. Components have been removed that also opera needs! Yet another example why closed source is bad… Hence you might want to give gnash a go, i.e. open source flash. The new Flash version is meant to work with opera version > 9.50 Beta, though (see bottom note). Anyway, here it goes for Flash version 9.0.48.0:

Note 2008/04/19: Before you get all frustrated about Flash and Opera you might enjoy operas’ ads.

Here we go

To install Adobe Flash Player after you installed Opera in Ubuntu, I found the best way is to, once again, use the debian way:

sudo aptitude install flashplugin-nonfree

After the install routine is done you need to add the path to plugins options in opera. Alternatively you could link there. To find where the new binaries are located do:

dpkg -S flashplugin-nonfree
app-install-data: /usr/share/app-install/desktop/flashplugin-nonfree.desktop
flashplugin-nonfree: /usr/lib/flashplugin-nonfree
flashplugin-nonfree: /var/cache/flashplugin-nonfree
flashplugin-nonfree: /usr/share/lintian/overrides/flashplugin-nonfree
flashplugin-nonfree: /usr/share/doc/flashplugin-nonfree
flashplugin-nonfree: /usr/share/doc/flashplugin-nonfree/changelog.gz
flashplugin-nonfree: /usr/share/doc/flashplugin-nonfree/copyright

Update 2008/04/16: The correct “list flag” for dpkg would be -L instead of -S:

dpkg -L flashplugin-nonfree | grep -i 'lib'
/usr/lib
/usr/lib/xulrunner
/usr/lib/xulrunner/plugins
/usr/lib/mozilla
/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
/usr/lib/iceape
/usr/lib/iceape/plugins
/usr/lib/iceweasel
/usr/lib/iceweasel/plugins
/usr/lib/firefox
/usr/lib/firefox/plugins
/usr/lib/midbrowser
/usr/lib/midbrowser/plugins
/usr/lib/xulrunner-addons
/usr/lib/xulrunner-addons/plugins
/usr/lib/flashplugin-nonfree
/var/lib
/var/lib/flashplugin-nonfree

/Update

Alternatively you could link the lib’s binary to Opera’s plugin directory:

sudo ln /usr/lib/flashplugin-nonfree/libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/opera/plugins/

Some say you may need to restart opera in order for plugins to actually work. Fortunally, for me it work right away. In opera’s address field type opera:plugins to see what opera knows about flash.Update: See this blog on bleeding edge info on plugin’s development status if interested.

Ressources:

• as always: man pages
• Launchpad bug report
• Adobe’s Linux Flash blog
• Ubuntu Community Help on restricted formats
• Ubuntu Community Help on Opera browser flash problems

Update: This works for 7.04, a.k.a. Feisty Fawn, and 7.10, a.k.a. Gutsy Gibbon.

Update 2008/04/16: On a side note: There is the option reinstall for aptitude if one wants to make sure the newest files are all in the right places.

Update 2008/04/19:I stumbled upon the close to be release of Opera 9.5 which is currently in beta state (and has even more great features once again before Firefox has them 😉 ). Supposingly the Debian package should get flash working. I tried the i386 version for Gutsy and it did work for me.

Update 2008/06/28: Here are some command line parameters you can start Opera with. Especially useful would be -debugplugin. To use it you have to open a terminal to see the additional information:

opera -debugplugin [Enter/Return Key]