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Flash Plugin Installation

Most Mageia users will find the Adobe Flash Plugin is already installed when they first install Mageia, but some users will have to install it seperately, and a very few users will have to follow a more complicated procedure to install Flash.

  • If Mageia is installed from a 'Live DVD' or 'Live CD' then the Flash Plugin will be automatically installed and the user will not have to do anything at all.
  • If Mageia was installed using the Classic DVD installer, and the check box labelled 'NonFree Software' was left checked during installation, then the Flash Plugin will be automatically installed. (Mageia 3 or higher)
  • If Mageia was installed using the Dual Arch CD without declaring an additional network source, then the Flash Plugin will not be installed, and must be added after installation.
  • If the computer Mageia is installed on has a Pentium III processor, then the flash plugin installed will not work, and a manual procedure is required to install a version of the plugin that will work with a P III.

Flash Plugin Package

flash-player-plugin

An RPM package called flash-player-plugin is provided in Mageia's 'Nonfree' software repository. This package does not contain the plugin itself. Installing flash-player-plugin will cause a download of the plugin from Adobe's server. Users should ensure that both the Nonfree and Nonfree Updates repositories are enabled in Mageia Control Centre>Software>ConfigureMediaSources. Whenever Adobe releases a bug fix for the plugin, a new package will appear in Nonfree Updates.

If using the Software Install GUI in Mageia Control Centre to install the plugin be careful to check the two drop down menus in the top left corner are both set to 'All' so the GUI will show packages without GUI's. Search on the word 'flash' and the plugin will be the first result. If your desktop shows the xdg menu (as in Gnome Classic), as well as installing the flash player, this package will put an entry in the tools sub-menu to allow changing the default flash player configuration.

Below will appear the package flash-player-plugin-kde, which allows changing the default flash configuration via KDE's system settings.

Installing the Mageia package is quicker and easier than installing from Adobe's web site.

Note that if you have a 64-bit version of Mageia, you most likely still have a 32-bit browser. (The official Mozilla builds are all 32-bit.)
In that case, be sure to install the 32-bit version of flash-player-plugin, as the 64-bit version only works with a 64-bit browser. As well, be careful not to install the 64-bit version when you update, as the flash plugin will become non-functional.

Installing on "old" (non-SSE2) machines

Starting with version 11.2, Adobe compiled the flash player plugin for CPUs with SSE2 capability. The consequence is that CPUs that handle only SSE but not SSE2 cannot use it.

If the following command returns no result, then your CPU doesn't handle SSE2, and you're affected by this bug.

grep -w sse2 /proc/cpuinfo

If the following command returns something, then your CPU handles SSE and you may warkaround this problem.

grep -w sse /proc/cpuinfo

Here's how: the 11.2 flash plugin included in Google Chrome 19 for Linux was compiled for SSE, and may be used in Firefox or other browsers by machines with processors that handle SSE. Newer versions of Google Chrome use the Pepper versions of the plugin, which works only on Chrome-based browsers.

To install the flash plugin from Google Chrome 19:

  1. uninstall the flash-player-plugin package
  2. remove any copies of earlier versions of libflashplayer.so from /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins (or /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins)
  3. download libgcflashplayer.so (17MB)
  4. you may check the integrity of the downloaded file with md5sum libgcflashplayer.so. The expected result is 58e48350459e8b12b3f1cba047184583.
  5. rename libgcflashplayer.so to libflashplayer.so.
  6. copy libflashplayer.so to /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins (or /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins)

That will give you Flash Player 11.2.202.235, which for now at least will eliminate the annoying warning messages Firefox gives you if you are using Flashplayer 11.1 or lower, and gives you somewhat better security than using older versions of the Flash plugin. Unfortunately, further updates, for Firefox at least, aren't possible because Adobe doesn't seem to care about compiling for SSE again for Linux. For the latest, most up-to-date developments in Flashplayer for Linux, you need to install and use Google Chrome (not Chromium).

More Information

See also MAQeia and here