Flash not Working on LM 15 Xfce

[jtaylor3222]

Hi,

I cannot get flash to work on LM 15 Xfce on Chromium or Firefox. As anyone ran into this issue? Is there a fix?

Regards,

John...

[karlchen]

Hello, John.

Wild guess:
You might be affected by this problem, provided you have got an AMD Athlon XP 2600 CPU:
[url=http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=148882#p779756]Linux Mint - Flash 11.2.x does not work when CPU is AMD Athlon XP 2600[/url]

If this is not the case then you might like to proceed like this in order to feed us some details:

1. Open your Firefox. Navigate to this Adobe webpage, please: [url=http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/]Adobe Flash About[/url].
   This is what Adobe tells me:
   [img]http://i.imgur.com/fayxaod.png[/img]
   (Adobe Flash Version Information)
   What does it tell you?
2. Please, open a terminal window. Execute this commandline and post its screen output:

   Code: Select all

   dpkg --list *flash*

Kind regards,
Karl

[gold_finger]

Wild guess:
You might be affected by this problem, provided you have got an AMD Athlon XP 2600 CPU:
Linux Mint - Flash 11.2.x does not work when CPU is AMD Athlon XP 2600

After further research, I discovered that the problem is not specific to that CPU, but to some older CPU's generally. Forgot to add that to above referenced post. Have since written a tutorial describing how to tell if your system is affected and how to get flash to work on the system if that is the case.

@jtaylor3222,
If you're working on an older computer, check this tutorial to find out if it is unable to use the latest Adobe flashplugin and what to do about it: [url=http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/1491]How to Fix Flash Video Problems on Older Computers[/url]
If computer is newer and above does not apply to you, then post back with info requested by karlchen.

[jtaylor3222]

Thanks guys. It looks like gold_finger's link did the trick and yes I'm running very old hardware. Flash 10.2 and 10.3 is working, but I keep getting an annoying alert that my plugin is out of date and then I have two options, to let it run this time or update the plugin; I of course click on let it run this time. Is there anyway that I can stop these pops ups from happening while running flash?

Regards,

John...

[karlchen]

Hello, John.

You might go to the Add-Ons list inside Firefox and select the Flash plugin. In the lower right hand part of each plugin entry there is a button which is actually a drop down list. It may offer up to 3 options: (1) Always ask before enabling , (2) Always enable, (3) Never enable

With respect to outdated Flash plugins I would not be amazed if you had to live with the confirmation dialogues. Every new Firefox version is increasingly suspicious of outdated plugins. The reason is pretty trivial, but makes sense: Older Java plugins and older Flash plugins have got security holes for which exploits exist in the wild. Quite a few computers have been infected with malware of different kind by exploiting such vulnerabilities. And even though Linux Mint cannot run (malicious) Windows executables out of the box, it can run unwanted software that only needs the browser to execute.

Kind regards,
Karl

[jtaylor3222]

Hello, John.

You might go to the Add-Ons list inside Firefox and select the Flash plugin. In the lower right hand part of each plugin entry there is a button which is actually a drop down list. It may offer up to 3 options: (1) Always ask before enabling , (2) Always enable, (3) Never enable

With respect to outdated Flash plugins I would not be amazed if you had to live with the confirmation dialogues. Every new Firefox version is increasingly suspicious of outdated plugins. The reason is pretty trivial, but makes sense: Older Java plugins and older Flash plugins have got security holes for which exploits exist in the wild. Quite a few computers have been infected with malware of different kind by exploiting such vulnerabilities. And even though Linux Mint cannot run (malicious) Windows executables out of the box, it can run unwanted software that only needs the browser to execute.

Kind regards,
Karl

Thanks Karl.

[HarzVieh]

Flash is not working on LM Xfce 16 too.. well, I did all the research on the issue, and yes, if you follow the advise and install the earlier versions of Flash it works. I do have the AMD 2600+ CPU.. I even did install the SMPlayer, that gives you the option play from URL.. and I must say it is impressive how an old PC like mine do play even 720p HD content.. Now, to be more precise, I give you some links I did watch:
Like some environment content from Robert Llewellyn: Mazdar: the City of the Future:
https://www.youtube.com/user/fullychargedshow
Or, if you give in DuckDuckGo: "BMW i3 production youtube" there are 4 clips in HD as well.. I play them as of reference.. I must admit, the quality of the picture is not the same as with the modern 64 bit mashine.. but, it is like 90%.. so, LM Xfce 16 is working on my old PC wery well. Here.. if you are interested in electric cars.. good for testing embeddet youtube content:
http://www.electric-vehiclenews.com/
Or.. some entertainment content for other formats on primewiredotag..
Now.. can someone please tell me, what it's all about the SMtube.. because it's not in the repositories, and there is no good explanation in the Help files too..

[gold_finger]

Now.. can someone please tell me, what it's all about the SMtube.. because it's not in the repositories, and there is no good explanation in the Help files too..

Rather than using Adobe's flashplugin through the web browser, SMTube just streams the videos from youtube and plays them in your video player software. (You can also use it to download the videos to disk for viewing later.) I think it defaults to using Mplayer, but you can change what player you want it to use by the settings button located along the bottom of the interface. I have mine set to use Vlc. As far as I know, it's only set-up to work with youtube. Don't know if can be adjusted somehow to work on any other websites.

Haven't had time to look into any of this yet, but found a post about possibly using Vlc to stream videos from other sites directly (no need for flash): http://askubuntu.com/questions/54379/vl ... lash-video

[HarzVieh]

Thanks.. VLC is working too.. I do start youtube clip, then stop it, click on the video frame mouse right button/Copy video URL.. then in the VLC (it is in German by me) so I guess Media/Open Networkstream.. and in the Network section I Strg+v the URL and click Play.. works the same..

[HarzVieh]

I did install the QupZilla webbrowser and it plays the flash. I am not on Xfce but it is 32 bit mashine.. can't say if it works because I did the downgrade of the Adobe Flash Player for Firefox or it works alone too.. I have both of them installed.

[HarzVieh]

Well.. I am not on 32 bit AMD PC now, but it is an old 1800 Mhz AMD 64 bit mashine, and it's playing embeddet Youtubes not good enough.. so I did install the SMtube:
http://smplayer.sourceforge.net/en/smtube

Code: Select all

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rvm/smplayer
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install smtube

and I can watch 720p Fully Charged Show videos in VLC.
What I want say: there is Minitube in Mint repositories, and I just installed it, and it works.. at least with 360p videos. They claim, it do not use Flash, so maybe it will work on older 32 bit mashines..

[MtnDewManiac]

Minitube is known to work well on older hardware. IDK how old and how well, but the app seems to use less resources than the average web browser app would when being used for the same purpose. AfaIK, it only works on YouTube videos, though, so it is not a "Flash substitute," just a method of viewing YouTube videos. I think some people probably use it because they like its features, even if their systems are such that they would be able to use the Youtube website anyway.

As always, having properly configured graphics card/driver setup is probably important.

I think (IIRC) that Apple computers/cell phones and (newer?) Android OS cell phones do not use Adobe Flash. If that is true, how do they deal with what is probably a very large number of websites which use Flash? Or do the users of those devices just not have the ability to view such pages as their designers intended?

Regards,
MDM

[HarzVieh]

Minitube is known to work well on older hardware.

It's freezes very often here.. then I must force to close it.. apart from that what's the point in having the 360p and 720p button if the size of the frame did not change? I mean if I do change the settings in the VLC (in smtube) it shows me the actual 720p video. Maybe Minitube is optimised for older hardware but the quality of the video in VLC (in smtube) is better. What is good in Minitube: you can choose the Channel.. so other stuff, that is not related will not show up.. What is not so good in VLC: sometimes I have this yellow line: not enough data in the buffer.. so it stops and after couple of seconds it's proceed, but that's not a pleasant experience..