This week, in our Linux Page (in Spanish), we have written some easy instructions to repair the flash plugin on Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty. In fact, after a brand new install on my Acer Aspire Athlon X2 I had big problems in visualizing Flash contents on Firefox 3. I tried to reinstall the plugin different times but the result did not change. Finally, reading a page in ubuntuforums.org I find the right solution for my problem. First of all you have to open Synaptic Package Manager (in System – Administration) and remove all the swfdec packages (in my case swfdec -mozilla and swfdec -gnome). Then, using the Terminal you have to type sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree. Now you restart Firefox and Flash contents will be available again. We believe that this solution is really fast and practical but if you know a better one which could permit us not to install non free code please let us know.

Although by no means an open source zealot, I really like to try, where possible, to choose an open alternative to software on my computers. In some respects, this has been easy, Ogg Vorbis, for example, has been not only an open, but a superior, alternative to MP3. However, one area which routinely bugs me is Flash. There are two projects out there attempting to deliver. Swfdec and Gnash. I gave both a spin on pre release Ubuntu Jaunty to see if they can compete with the proprietary Adobe flashplugin-nonfree package.

I tested both packages on the three flash heavy websites I would use most often. BBC iPlayer, Youtube and Last.fm. I used the packages available in the repositories, which contains the most recent version of Gnash but not swfdec. Unfortunately, despite the hard work of both projects, it just doesn’t seem to be worth switching just yet.

Gnash (mozilla-plugin-gnash 0.8.4-0ubuntu1) refuses to work on any of the sites I frequent. It will draw the various players, albeit slowly, but refuse to play the content.

Swfdec (swfdec-mozilla 0.8.2-1ubuntu1) does a little better. It will play Youtube clips with little or no problem, unfortunately like Gnash it will fail to play anything on iPlayer or Last.fm. A general aspect of swfdec that I really appreciated was that it did not automatically play any flash content. Instead it drew a player and presented you with a play button instead. A great feature for the bandwidth conscious.

I know that this is by no means an exhaustive test, however, for me, Jaunty will not be the release that I move to open source flash. However, this is no reflection on the Gnash and Swfdec projects volunteers, as their task is pretty huge.

[en] New swfdec PPA for Ubuntu with latest versions is out \o/ Yeahhhh

By the way, otte one of the main developper is feeling lonely and don’t feel the love about his work ! Go and hugs him

[fr] Le nouveau PPA swfdec pour Ubuntu avec les dernières versions est sorti \o/ Ouaiiiissss

Swfdec 0.9.2 (unstable version) was released and is in my personal PPA.

Try it, test it and don’t forget to give feed back

[en] The new 0.8.0 stable version of swfdec is out.

And I’ve upload swfedc and swfdec-mozilla new versions in my Personnal PPA (Stemp PPA) swfdec-team PPA.

[fr] La nouvelle version stable 0.8.0 de swfedc est sortie.

J’ai créé et uploadé les paquets dans mon PPA personnel (Stemp PPA) le PPA swfdec-team.

swfdec0.8 (0.8.0-1~intrepidppa1 and/et swfdec0.8 (0.8.0-1~hardyppa1))

• libswfdec-0.8-1 SWF (Macromedia Flash) decoder library

• libswfdec-0.8-1-dbg SWF (Macromedia Flash) decoder library

• libswfdec-0.8-dev SWF (Macromedia Flash) decoder library

swfdec-mozilla (0.8.0-1~intrepidppa1 and/et 0.8.0-1~hardyppa1)

• swfdec-mozilla Mozilla plugin for SWF files (Macromedia Flash)

Alexander Hunziker asked me to update my swfdec packages to the new 0.7.4 release (released Wednesday).

I also give this new release a try and here it is :

Midori on Google Video with swfdec 0.7.4

As usual Midori, WebKit and Swfdec packages are available in my PPA.

Un nouvelle version instable de swfdec est sortie hier.

À la demande de d’Alexander Hunziker j’ai mis-à-jour mon ppa qui accueille donc maintenant la version 0.7.4.

Le plugin fonctionne avec Firefox et Midori, mais avec des performances et une compatibilité encore loin de celle de la version propriétaire.

Rendez vous en Septembre pour la version 0.8 !

In my quest for the ultimate operating system, there can be only one…..

OK, maybe I like the Highlander too much, but this is serious stuff…

Right…well this morning I decided to hop over to Fedora 9, I know I said I was going to OpenSuse, and I tried OpenSuse 11 and it stayed on my hard disk for a few hours before I decided I wasn’t really happy with any of their desktop environment customizations, and the “one-click” Nvidia driver ended up turning into me compiling kernel modules by hand, at the Terminal, after frantically trying to get YaST to recognize the package I was giving it, which the process went something like this:

1. Boot into KDE 4, launch Konqueror…segfault.

2. Click on Konqueror again….segfault.

3. Click on Konqueror again, it opens, and I head to OpenSuse’s site to click on these one-click drivers they speak of, the ymp file (a script for YaST) chokes Konqueror and it falls over dead yet again, so I open Firefox which makes it to the site and opens the ymp file without an issue, it opens it in YaST and YaST crashes.

4. Log out and log back in to GNOME, open Firefox, click on ymp, YaST installs the driver, I reboot……..still using “VESA”…….What in the HELL is this? The least it should have done was give me the 2d accelerated “NV” driver, so I try installing it again, negative…..

5. Uninstall the package from YaST, download the Nvidia driver from Nvidia thenselves, drop to the terminal, build the modules, build looks good, reboot, and…….VESA, I have the Nvidia control panel, but thats apparantly the only part of it that did work and with no functional driver, it won’t do anything for me anyway!

You know, at this point I’ve gone beyond what a typical user would know how to do, much less the target audience they refer to in their emails saying things like “Your Linux is Ready” and “Linux without chown, chroot, or chmod-ing anything”, or “Linux for people that don’t grok the concept”, whatever, they can bite me, I’d rather be stuck with Debian at least it’s possible to make it work, and what about “chmod +x” on my video game installers from id Software? Jackasses!

So since I was sitting there with 2d video, no sound (did I mention that?), and a system full of segfaults on a $1,000 piece of equipment, I decided to get on my laptop and download Fedora 9.

Now the first thing to know about Fedora, assuming you know nothing, is that it is a community project built around Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora replaced Red Hat Linux Personal Edition back in 2003, so you can think of Fedora 9 and something of a Red Hat 18.

Being built on an enterprise grade foundation brings a lot of benefits to the home user, the system is very stable, extremely secure (moreso than most desktop users even need, but the more the better) shipping with SELinux enabled and Enforcing by default, Red Hat’s Exec-Shield, and the new Linux kernel’s own Address Space Layout Randomization and PIE executable protection, and then it gives you a robust firewall set up utility, put it simply, it would have to be super worm made by super hacker to get into your system, compared to your average Windows box that pretty much crawls with all kinds of bad things.

Fedora is also very geared towards maximum performance and stability, because Red Hat Enterprise pretty much has to be when their customers are a who’s who of the Fortune 500.

But enough of that, why else do *I* like it?

I picked up on everything I needed to know in a matter of 3-4 hours using it and a little reading of the unofficial community documentation, of which I’ll recommend two sites very highly in a bit.

It was very easy to install, get my repositories configured, and pull the software that I wanted, it’s no fuss whatsoever actually, my ralink wifi works out of the box, and with WPA on my network for a bonus, with Ubuntu I was hacking on config files to jerry rig all of that and the next operating system upgrade could be the end of it.

http://www.fedoraguide.info/

Do a system wide upgrade before doing anything else.

Add the repos you need.

Make sure you get the protect-base and presto plugins for YUM.

For my Nvidia driver, which is the only proprietary driver I even needed, it was “pull the driver from Livna repository, reboot, it works”.

Media codecs and flash: Grab the latest copies of gstreamer-plugins-ugly, gstreamer-plugins-bad, gstreamer-ffmpeg, swfdec, and swfdec-mozilla from Package Kit. (System/Administration/Add Remove Software), you may also prefer Banshee (latest version!) to the Rhythmbox, so add Banshee and remove Rhytmbox if you like, get libdvdread if you want to play DVD movies.

Now don’t forget to configure your firewall.

32-bit compatibility files: If you’re on x86-64 and play Quake Wars or Doom 3 or the like…

su -c ‘yum install alsa-lib.i386′

su -c ‘yum install SDL.i386′

And you now have a working system!

Oh, just remember to not upgrade the kernel until there’s also an updated Nvidia driver from Livna, it usually happens pretty rapidly, if you screw up don’t worry one is on the way, and remember to get adblock plus for Firefox. (since I know most of you use it)

So as you can see:

Debian and Ubuntu could learn a lot from Fedora, looking at Fedora (last time I used it, it was Red Hat Linux) it’s clear that Ubuntu is a mere toy, and OpenSuse is a broken pile of crap.

Also check out Fedora’s new Compiz settings, you can flick the mouse cursor to the upper right and do this:

Or Ctrl-Alt-Down arrow, and tapping left or right, pulls you to a view of all of your virtual desktops.

Or Ctrl-Alt-left/right arrow rotates your virtual desktops as a “cube”.

So grab a copy today, this time free is worth something and it really is “open”:

http://www.fedoraproject.org

Desconozco cuál es el motivo, pero tras las últimas actualizaciones de ubuntu Hardy y Firefox 3, el navegador se cierra aleatoria y repentinamente al intentar reproducir archivos en formato Flash FLV en mi portátil. Se prueba a instalar la versión 10beta en lugar de la versión 9 del plugin de Flash (web de Adobe), pero el firefox se sigue cerrando, así que optamos por desinstalar el plugin de Adobe y probar el estado del proyecto gnash, la alternativa libre al plugin de Adobe.

Anteriormente gnash tenía mala fama, ya que además de diversos problemas, no era capaz de reproducir el formato flv (vídeos de YouTube), pero tras la liberación de las especificaciones del formato por parte de Adobe, y teniendo en cuenta que el desarrollo de gnash ha estado muy activo, siendo considerado como prioritario, es posible que ya podamos ver algunos de sus avances.

Desinstalamos el plugin de Flash:

$ sudo apt-get remove --purge flashplugin-nonfree libflashsupport

Instalamos plugin gnash:

$ sudo apt-get install gnash gnash-common mozilla-plugin-gnash

Nada más instalarlo, primera decepción: no reproduce los vídeos de YouTube. El reproductor tiene muy buen aspecto, ya que con el botón derecho accedemos a bastantes opciones de configuración, log y seguridad. Además, nos permite grabar la película FLV y abrir otras del disco duro, pero parece que los vídeos de YouTube se muestran en SWF8 y gnash reproduce sólo hasta la versión 7. Así que procedemos a desinstalarlo y probar la otra opción que tenemos: swfdec.

$ sudo apt-get remove --purge gnash gnash-common mozilla-plugin-gnash
$ sudo apt-get install swfdec-gnome swfdec-mozilla

La decepción de este reproductor viene por el alto consumo de CPU, haciendo que nuestro Celeron, que se muestra holgado para todas las demás tareas multimedia, se ahogue reproduciendo un simple vídeo de YouTube, haciendo el navegador lento y con dificultad para cambiar de pestaña a partir de ese momento.  Esto hace también que los vídeos se vean a trompicones.

Por tanto volvemos a instalar el plugin de Adobe, esperando que vengan tiempos mejores para el Flash en Linux, una de las mayores flaquezas que el mejor Sistema Operativo para navegar en Internet tiene:

$ sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree libflashsupport

Para arreglar el problema de los crashes del firefox hemos desinstalado el firefox via Synaptic, borrado el directorio ~/.mozilla y vuelta a instalar.  Los addons habían desaparecido y ha habido que instalarlos de nuevo, pero el problema está solucionado.

1. Obre el llistat de repositoris:
sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

2. Afegeix la línia
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/juliank/ubuntu hardy main

3. Actualitza:
sudo apt-get update

4. Instal·la:
sudo apt-get install swfdec-gnome swfdec-mozilla libswfdec-0.6-90

Existeix una versió més moderna, la 0.7 (desenvolupada per JulianK) pel plugin i les llibreries, pero són incompatibles amb el reproductor autònom swfdec-gnome, el qual pots obrir des de Aplicacions -> So i vídeo -> Reproductor de Flash Swfdec després d’haver-lo instal·lat.
Si vols provar la versió experimental de JulianK adaptada a Hardy, instal·la swfdec-mozilla0.7, incompatible amb el reproductor autònom de Gnome.

Enllaç: Swfdec

As promised, i have built a few development snapshots of the swfdec git branch for hardy. They are available in my PPA.

To use it, add the following line to /etc/apt/sources.list and install swfdec-mozilla0.7.

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/juliank/ubuntu hardy main

Please note that these packages are experimental and are only for experienced users.

After the trouble with swfdec and gstreamer, I found out the source of the issue (the fluendo mp3 plugin, see below), and can now use swfdec with gstreamer.

Warning: Do not use the mp3 plugin from fluendo.com

swfdec does not always work with the binary mp3 plugin from fluendo.com, at least not in Ubuntu 8.04 64bit. It works with the version shipped in Ubuntu (gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3) and with the mad plugin in gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly. An example is http://youtube.com/watch?v=CSp7jsV7oG0

Installation of missing gstreamer plugins

This works on both, Debian and Ubuntu, provided gnome-app-install is installed (default in Ubuntu). Simply open a youtube video, and you will be asked for searching the missing codecs. This also works in almost any other gstreamer application, like rhythmbox or totem.

Builds of the development branch

I will provide builds of the 0.7.1 git versions of swfdec and swfdec-mozilla in my PPA soon. This version even supports fullscreen mode in youtube! The PPA will build versions for hardy and intrepid.

I created a version of swfdec 0.6.6 using mad and ffmpeg instead of gstreamer, because with gstreamer it failed to play multiple videos on youtube.com.

The release is available in my PPA at:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/juliank/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/juliank/ubuntu hardy main

I will also provide some builds of the development branch (0.7.1) soon.

Update:Maybe it was not clear, but the videos crashed the browser. It also didn’t really work in totem and I’m still looking for the source of the problem. I have every available gstreamer plugin package installed. Try it yourself, http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=CSp7jsV7oG0. It works with gnash, but gnash does not work with wordpress stats page.

Update 2: I now found the real problem: I had an binary version of fluendo’s mp3 plugin installed (from fluendo.com), which caused the crash. After removing the file, everything works. (using fluendo-mp3 shipped with Ubuntu).

Update 3: I removed the ffmpeg version from my PPA, as it is not needed.

He visto por los foros que uno de los primeros errores que cometemos tras instalar Ubuntu es que abrimos Firefox y en vez de instalar el plugin tipico para ver los objetos flash, instalamos erroneamente el plugin swfdec

Es facil darse cuenta de que no es el que estamos acostumbrados a ver, este carga el flash pero nos muestra un boton tipo play que hasta que no se pulse no se ve la pelicula.

El problema nos asusta un poco mas cuando intentamos borrar el swfdec o reinstalar el plugin correcto y vemos que n o tenemos opcion a ello, al final la mayoria se conforma con  lo que hay y punto.

Bien la solucion es esta y es para la consola:

sudo aptitude remove libswfdec-0.6-90 swfdec-mozilla

Con esto eliminaremos el codec activo – el swfdec- y cuando queramos ver una pagina con flash nos volvera a salir las tres opciones de plugins, aqui es donde debemos correctamente elegir la opcion buena y todo funcionara a la perfeccion.

Το Gnome ανανεώνεται και εξελίσσεται με τη νέα έκδοσή του, 2.22. Σκοπός της νέας αυτής release είναι η σταθερότητα, πρώτης τάξης υποστήριξη των διαφόρων γλωσσών και όπως πάντα η μεγάλη ευκολία χρήσης.

Πιο αναλυτικά στην νέα αυτή έκδοση βλέπουμε την εισαγωγή του GVFS, network-trasparent virtual filesystem layer, που θα παρέχει πολύ καλύτερες αποδόσεις για τις εφαρμογές που χρησιμοποιούν αρχεία σε δίκτυο και όχι μόνο. Σύμφωνα με την ομάδα του Gnome το GVFS φέρνει μεγαλύτερη σταθερότητα σε σχέση με το Gnome-VFS που χρησιμοποιούνταν ως τώρα. Υιοθετούνται οι αρχές του Freedesktop.org για την αποθήκευση διεγραμμένων αρχείων, γίνονται διαθέσιμα νέα πρωτόκολλα όπως το cdda:// που θα εμφανίζει όλα τα διαθέσιμα tracks ενός cd, διάθεσιμα ως αρχεία WAV, gphoto2:// που θα παρέχει πρόσβαση στις συνδεδεμένες ψηφιακές μηχανές. Ο File Manager του Gnome γίνεται εξυπνότερος όσον αφορά τα removable media, παρέχοντας μια μπάρα πληροφορίων με τις διαθέσιμες επιλογές όταν συνδέεται κάποια συσκευή του τύπου removable media, ή οταν περιηγήστε στα περιεχόμενα μιας τέτοιας συσκευής.

PolicyKit Integration, ένα νέο cross-desktop framework ασφάλειας. Σκοπός του η παροχή ενός στιβαρού συστήματος ώστε οι εφαρμογές που τρέχουν οι απλοί χρήστες να αποκτούν πιο υψηλού βαθμού δικαιώματα. Με τη χρήση του PolicyKit οι διαχειριστές ενός συστήματος μπορούν να επιτρέπουν διάφορες εργασίες στο χρήστη, όπως το ξεκίνημα και το σταμάτημα κάποιων υπηρεσιών, αλλαγή ώρας και ημερομηνίας κ.ά.

Window compositing, σε ικανά συστήματα παρέχονται κάποιες έξτρα δυνατότητες όσον αφορά τα παράθυρα και την εμφάνισή τους. Όπως drop shadows, live previews κατά τη μεταφορά από παράθυρο σε παράθυρο με τη χρήση του Alt+Tab, και trasparencies.

Καλύτερη αναπαραγωγή των DVDs και υποστήριξη της ψηφιακής τηλεόρασης DVB. Με τον Movie Player θα είναι επίσης δυνατή η χρήση κάποιων plugins για το Myth-TV, YouTube και tracker-based αναζήτηση. Δίνεται επίσης η δυνατότητα sharing των playlists και η χρήση υποτίτλων. Με τη χρήση του open flash decoder swfdec δίνεται η δυνατότητα αναπαραγωγής flash.

Βελτίωση του Evolution και υποστήριξη για Google Calendar και tagging για τα emails.

To Gnome 2.22 φέρνει και μια νέα εφαρμογή, το Cheese, για τη δημιουργία video και τράβηγμα φωτογραφιών με τη web cam σας.

Οι βελτιώσεις του Gnome 2.22 δεν σταματούν εδώ. Μπορείτε να διαβάσετε πιο αναλυτικά τα πάντα για τη νέα έκδοση στη σελίδα: GNOME 2.22 Release Notes.

Σημαντικό είναι να πούμε ότι η νέα αυτή έκδοση του Gnome παρουσιάζεται τη στιγμή που ο βασικός αντίπαλος και ανταγωνιστής του, το KDE, βρίσκεται σε πλήρη φάση ανάπτυξης της έκδοσης 4.xx. Μιας έκδοσης που για πολλούς θεωρείται ό,τι θέτει σε πολύ δύσκολη θέση το Gnome και αμφισβητά ανοιχτά τις στρατηκές της ομάδας ανάπτυξης του Gnome.

La última versión de Gnash 0.8.1 ya no reproduce vídeos de youtube. En los comentarios de otro blog he encontrado una alternativa que sí reproduce vídeos de youtube actualmente. Se trata de swfdec 0.5.5.

Lo he compilado, y funciona. No sé la razón, pero en mi sistema se carga demasiado y es imposible ver los vídeos. Por lo general funciona al nivel de Gnash. Un buen detalle del plugin para mozilla de swfdec es que bloquea todos los flash embebidos en las páginas web y debes hacer click previamente en ellos para reproducirlos. A Pep le funciona, a mí no.

Se espera, por el ciclo de seis meses para publicar una nueva release, que para febrero el equipo de Gnash publiqué una nueva versión. Ya veremos que tal.

UPDATE: I know this tutorial sucks, but it’s hard to make it better as I’ve not had these problems lately nor do I have much more patience to work on it. So, it’s here if it helps, if not I’m sorry. I’ll do the best I can to get a good one eventually.

As evidenced by the numerous threads on this at the official forums, these are all quite common and unfortunate issues. I don’t wanna steal traffic from them , so please visit them and ask the good folks if one of these solutions doesn’t help, or just because I told you to. These solutions come from there anyway, I just want to conglomerate them into an easy-to-digest format. I’m only directing you, this won’t solve everything. At the most all I can give you is links.

Let’s get down and dirty, let’s Flash each other:

First off if you don’t have Flash installed already, get the official Adobe nonfree version by typing:

sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

Now most of the time it should work flawlessly, though a lot of people have problems.

• No sound in Flash applets

The solutions:

Try this in a terminal..

mv ~/.asoundrc .asoundrc.old
mv ~/.asoundrc.asoundconf ~/.asoundrc.asoundconf.old

From what I can tell this recreates the configuration files (for ALSA?) anew. I know for sure that updating on top of an already installed system (eg Gutsy -> Hardy) can leave gunk behind. I think that’s why YouTube used to freeze so much as well. So, I’d advise you to try this, especially if you’ve performed an upgrade instead of a clean install.

If this doesn’t work:

Install alsa-oss and set Firefox to use it

This may cause latency in sound by a half-second or so.

Sources:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=590989

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=255422

• Flash videos freeze
• Videos perpetually load (specifically YouTube)
• Other Flash objects freeze/don’t show up

The Solutions: There isn’t one that I can find. I haven’t had any problems with this as of late but :/

• One is unable to play a Flash video with sound when another app is playing sound at the same time.

The solution: Figures, this is a PulseAudio problem. Just install libflashsupport:

sudo apt-get install libflashsupport

This corrects Flash 9’s glitch of not outputting sound through PulseAudio correctly. Be advised though that at least for me it had a tendency to crash Firefox a lot. After so much crashing I’d rather not have multiple sounds at once frankly, I uninstalled it and Firefox hasn’t crashed in days (save for a couple mp3 problems)

Sources: I found it somewhere on Ubuntu Forums at first, but I don’t remember where, nor can I find it. But thank you whoever you are!

• Use an alternative Flash plugin (Gnash, swfdec) — Gnash didn’t work too well for me; I’ve never tried swfdec.
• Random crashes: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=778498
• Search the Ubuntu Forums! It’s worth it. I’ve fixed 99.9% of my problems by nosing around in there.

And thus it ends. Linux is a beauty and a curse when it comes to diversity. I hope I could help somebody by gathering all these posts together. More will be added over time, but there’s simply too many solutions to list here. Please feel free to suggest additions to this post. I wanna help as many people as I can

Goodbuy.