Firefox Not Playing Youtube videos - Mint 17 & Mint 13 XFCE

[HilltopsGM]

It is an older machine:
emachine with an AMD Athlon 3000+ processor (32bit only)
512MB of RAM (I have bumped it to 1GB)
nVidia Geforce4 MX Graphics (I've inserted now an ATI 9200 graphics card)
160 GB Drive

(I've also tried it on a quad core with 8GB RAM and an nVidia GTX 560 - it's not for lack of Horsepower - I get the same problem)

I have installed Mint 17 XFCE 32 bit AND Mint 13 XFCE 32 bit (on the older machine)

For some reason the updates kill the ability to watch youtube videos.

For example, a clean install (before any updates) of Mint 13 XFCE plays youtube videos perfectly.
Do all updates to it (including backports) and you get nothing - no player outline, nothing.
All you see are the links to the videos, but when you try to go there the space where the video SHOULD be is blank.

I've seen the odd comment about selecting HTML5 - but that doesn't work and is sort of moot IMO as it was working fine out of the box.

Why?

And Why would Mint 17 not be working?

Did something happen to the new version of firefox in MINT that doesn't play nice with youtube anymore?

Thanks for the help.

[0ddity]

In Firefox, go to Menu>addons and click on Plugins on the left. In the list of installed plugins, you should see Shockwave Flash. If it's there, what version is it? And what is the setting for it (Ask to Activate, Always Activate, Never Activate)?

[HilltopsGM]

Settings "Always Activate"
Version 11.2.202.394

This in now on the MInt 17 XFCE 32 bit install
I can't get Chrome browser to start (which should have flash that comes with it) either (downloaded it directly from Google).
Chromium won't start either.

I just tried Opera, and it says that the plugin flash plugin crashed too.

[ofb]

Athlon 3000+? I think you're out of luck.

Show us the output of: cat /proc/cpuinfo

Short version: Flash in Linux requires SSE2 support in the CPU. Blame Adobe. They were total jerks about this. Wiped out a whole bunch of otherwise useful AMD machines.

[HilltopsGM]

Interesting turn of events.

test@test-Product-Name ~ $ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 6
model : 10
model name : AMD Athlon(tm) XP 3000+
stepping : 0
cpu MHz : 2171.000
cache size : 512 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 1
core id : 0
cpu cores : 1
apicid : 0
initial apicid : 0
fdiv_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse syscall mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow
bogomips : 4342.79
clflush size : 32
cache_alignment : 32
address sizes : 34 bits physical, 32 bits virtual
power management: ts

I don't think it is the CPU as I am having the same issue with a machine that has an
Intel Cor i7-2720QM @2.2GHz
8GB RAM
and an nVidia GTX560

Remember - it runs perfectly out of the box after the install.

Now, on the lesser machine (after reinstalling mint 13 XFCE 32 bit) the only thing I did was run the Update Manager (leaving the defaults of 1, 2, and 3 selected).

As soon as I did that - Firefox quit playing the the youtube videos. Strange.
I thought that the defaults of 1, 2, and 3 should have be safe . . . but we are getting closer to the problem.

[ofb]

Remember - it runs perfectly out of the box after the install.

On a fresh 13 but not a fresh 17, yes? The SSE2 requirement was in the last Adobe Flash release for Linux before they froze development.

I don't think it is the CPU as I am having the same issue with a machine that has an

No idea there. But don't kid yourself about the SSE2 requirement. Google around a bit. It was a rather big noisy deal at the time so you won't have search hard.

[HilltopsGM]

yep - you were right . . . it was the SSE2 thing on the older machine.

This plugin seemed to fix it perfectly for the older machine:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... l5/?src=ss
. . . at least for youtube videos, AND we don't have to worry about the security problems of the other option below.

The other option:
I also found this post on installing an older version of Flash (I am not a fan of it, but it is there)

http://forums.bodhilinux.com/index.php? ... -bodhi-23/

With the appropriate warnings from gold_fingers post here:
http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/1491
that being:

ADDITIONAL NOTE: When you first go to video sites and try to play videos, they may complain that you need to upgrade your flashplayer. DO NOT do that. Simply click the circle with the line through it on the video player window and tell it to allow use of the older player and remember that setting for the site you are on. Repeat that procedure for each site you run into asks you to upgrade the player.

EDIT added 12/28/13 -- Note that using an older flashplugin may introduce possible security vulnerability issues. Although more so on Windows than Linux, the risk is not zero -- so, you may want to keep the plugin deactivated in your browser when not using it for video viewing.

Thanks ofb for the gentle slap up side the head I sure appreciate the help.

Now, to figure out what I did wrong with the newer machine (it IS SSE2 capable). I will post that as soon as I have another clue.

[ofb]

Yeah, we all tend to go through all the Five Stages of Grief when faced with the Athlon Flash bug.

Interesting to hear Youtube HTML5 support is finally good enough. It was still a bad joke when I finally gave up.

Now the i7... that's just strange.

What ISOs have you tried? Have you tested Flash while in a Live session? Note that you can load and run proprietary drivers within Mint live sessions.

[conecob]

I have the same trouble with firefox in Linux mint 17 cinnamon. I only disabled the swf plugin in Firefox and now I can see all videos. I cannot explain why. Can someone help me understanding? Is Firefox plugin incompatible with flash 11 installed in Mint? Thank You