The Ubuntu Stories

Seeing that Flash takes up a prominent position on the web these days, Flash performance is crucial to a decent OS nowadays. And let that be one of the biggest problems I have with Ubuntu: Flash performance is good when I play only 1 movie and/or flash website at a time, but when I open up two, the problems start: videos are not playing smooth, audio sync is off, …

With Flash Player 10, performance is increased immensely. I can play multiple flash videos at a time, without any problems at all. Problem is: the new flash player is not yet included in the sources of apt-get, so you won’t get an automatic update. So, here’s a quick HOW-TO:

(1) Close all Firefox-windows.

(2) Open up a terminal, and type in the following command:

sudo apt-get remove flashplugin-nonfree

(3) Go to http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html, and download the .TAR.GZ version for Linux. Please note: this is a pre-release version (at the moment of typing, at least)! Save the file in your home-directory (or where you want it). Then navigate to that directory in you terminal (if you saved it in your homedirectory, if you open a new terminal, you’re in your home-directory).

(4) Execute following commands:

tar -xf flashplayer10_install_linux_070208.tar.gz
cd install_flash_player_10_linux
sudo su
./flashplayer-installer

What you are doing:
- untar the .tar.gz in the current directory
- go to the folder you just extracted
- identify yourself as root (don’t use this too often, rather use sudo when you can)
- execute the installer

(5) Just follow through the installer.

Voilà!