flash player for Debian 9

[stevepusser]

But the open Chromium in Debian won't download the Flash plugin for itself, as far as I know. Only Google Chrome can do that.

[Lysander]

But the open Chromium in Debian won't download the Flash plugin for itself, as far as I know. Only Google Chrome can do that.

That is strange. In Jessie and Stretch, Chromium was my initial way of getting Flash to work and worked out of the box in both cases.

So I did an experiment, I uninstalled your .deb and went to Chromium to do a Flash check. The Adobe site says

Flash Player is pre-installed in Google Chrome, but not enabled.

However, I went to play a Flash video, and I didn't have to do anything, it worked. Odd.

[stevepusser]

Do you also have Google Chrome installed? I think Chromium can also look for and use the Flash that Chrome downloads.

[Lysander]

Do you also have Google Chrome installed? I think Chromium can also look for and use the Flash that Chrome downloads.

No, I'm anti-Google Chrome and would not install it. I remember reading somewhere that Chromium came bundled with Flash which is why I downloaded it in the first place. I wish I remember where I read that now.

[stevepusser]

Since Flash is closed and proprietary, there's no way it could be included in a Chromium package from Debian main. Even if it just downloaded Flash instead, it would then be in the contrib section.

[Bulkley]

I download Flash player (if i need it) from Adobe and copy libflashplayer.so to .mozilla/plugins directory.

+1.

[Lysander]

Since Flash is closed and proprietary, there's no way it could be included in a Chromium package from Debian main. Even if it just downloaded Flash instead, it would then be in the contrib section.

OK, I will try to imagine a different scenario. Let's say that I downloaded pepperflash manually and then forgot. Which is, of course, possible. I then installed Chromium and it worked off the back of that. What confuses me is why such an installation would not work with Opera or FF but would with Chromium.

Now, I need to run a command to see which packages were installed manually [and ideally when]. There are quite a few options here that I can see. Fortunately none of these need sudo and there is some good info here

https://wiki.debian.org/ListInstalledPackages

I am also interested in some of these options

Code: Select all

grep install /var/log/dpkg.log

from here

or

Code: Select all

( zcat $( ls -tr /var/log/apt/history.log*.gz ) ; cat /var/log/apt/history.log ) | egrep '^(Start-Date:|Commandline:)' | grep -v aptdaemon | egrep '^Commandline:' | egrep 'install' 1>>installed_packages.txt

from here

or

Code: Select all

comm -23 <(aptitude search '~i !~M' -F '%p' | sed "s/ *$//" | sort -u) <(gzip -dc /var/log/installer/initial-status.gz | sed -n 's/^Package: //p' | sort -u)

from here

or possibly this

https://superuser.com/questions/48374/f ... d-packages

If it turns out that I did install Pepperflash manually, I will, of course, humbly apologise and remind all and sundry on this forum that being "100% sure" of something is never a guarantee for accuracy.

[Lysander]

Well, not quite time for me to eat humble pie yet.

I checked the logs and I did indeed manually install Pepperflash, though several hours after installing Chromium. This makes me think that I probably installed Chromium, checked Flash was working and then went on to do other things [since Flash is the only reason I installed Chromium].

So just now as an experiment I uninstalled Pepperflash and uninstalled the .deb Flash package again - Flash still works in Chromium, though nothing else. I can only assume that it's bundled in, as I read.

The only other mention of Chrome in the logs is chrome-gnome-shell:amd64 , but that's something different, from what I can gather.

[pylkko]

So, how are you testing if "flash works"? Are you using Adobe's test or something else? I have chromium installed and no flash on this machine that I am using now... If I go to a flash video I get a message "update flash. download and install the latest version of Adobe Flash player so that you can watch this content". IS it possible that you had several flash versions on your machine and when you deleted one, there was still another or sometihng like that?

[GarryRicketson]

I have not really read the entire thread, and do not really care to,
but I noticed this:

by Lysander »This makes me think that I probably installed Chromium

Please do not think I am trying to be snarky or something , I am not.
If you are not sure if you installed a package, or not sure it installed.
There is a simple command available to check.

Code: Select all

dpkg-query -l  

More details:
https://wiki.debian.org/ListInstalledPackages

Any way, that might be use full to others as well, and in future situations
when one is not sure if a package has been installed.

[stevepusser]

The apt system can only know about files that were installed by a package in its system. If you go and just manually install a .so file someplace, such as that pepperflash .so file, apt won't know a thing about it and naturally won't remove it automatically. I bet that's what going on in your case.

The newer Chromium-based Opera has a list of locations where it looks for Pepperflash. I know the adobeflashplugin package we have in MX gets it working on Opera, so it must put the .so file or a symlink someplace where Opera is looking.

[Lysander]

So, how are you testing if "flash works"? Are you using Adobe's test or something else? I have chromium installed and no flash on this machine that I am using now... If I go to a flash video I get a message "update flash. download and install the latest version of Adobe Flash player so that you can watch this content". IS it possible that you had several flash versions on your machine and when you deleted one, there was still another or sometihng like that?

I suppose it's possible, I have no idea now. The whole thing is confusing. I am checking by looking at Adobe TV.

The apt system can only know about files that were installed by a package in its system. If you go and just manually install a .so file someplace, such as that pepperflash .so file, apt won't know a thing about it and naturally won't remove it automatically. I bet that's what going on in your case.

The newer Chromium-based Opera has a list of locations where it looks for Pepperflash. I know the adobeflashplugin package we have in MX gets it working on Opera, so it must put the .so file or a symlink someplace where Opera is looking.

What is strange is that Chromium and FF both have very good Flash, whereas in Opera and Vivaldi it still works, but not as well. From what I can tell, Chromium/FF are pointed at a different version of the plugin.

My apologies to the forum that I am dragging this on. I think I will leave it for now, I am not contributing much of use to this topic at the moment.

[SilvioTO]

The package flashplugin-nonfree is not present in official stretch repositories:
https://packages.debian.org/search?keyw ... ection=all

[Grell]

Anyone else getting this annoying bar at the top of chromium for sites that require flash? Here is a screenshot:

[stevepusser]

You can go to Adobe's Flash test site and it will tell you what version you have installed, as well as the current release.

[kalle123]

The package flashplugin-nonfree is not present in official stretch repositories:
https://packages.debian.org/search?keyw ... ection=all

Not in stretch, but hopefully it will show up in future ....

https://packages.debian.org/search?keyw ... in-nonfree

[tsekman]

hi, this is how i t worked with me..

chromium Version 59.0.3071.86 (Developer Build) built on Debian 9.0, running on Debian 9.0 (64-bit)
adobe flash player Version 26.0.0.131 flash_player_ppapi_linux.x86_64.tar.gz

after following the instructions on the README file, i created the folder usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin and copy all downloaded files there.
however nothing happened.

so... i make some changes

cat /etc/chromium.d/pepperflashplugin-nonfree
#flashso="/usr/lib/pepperflashplugin-nonfree/libpepflashplayer.so"
flashso="/usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin/libpepflashplayer.so"
flashversion=`strings $flashso 2> /dev/null | grep LNX | cut -d ' ' -f 2 | sed -e "s/,/./g"`
CHROMIUM_FLAGS="$CHROMIUM_FLAGS --ppapi-flash-path=$flashso --ppapi-flash-version=$flashversion"

and worked. i dont know if there are security issues by making that change to the path. hope not.

[Eck]

What about freshplayer? aptitude install browser-plugin-freshplayer-pepperflash? Flash works for me, and there's a wiki.debian.org entry for it, but it describes compiling it. Unnecessary now since it in the repos.

[stevepusser]

Freshplayer is a wrapper for some browsers to use pepperflash. The Debian installer, pepperflashplugin-nonfree, is not in Stretch and only has an amd64 version upstream. When I looked at it, the problem for 32-bit was trivial to fix, so I guess Debian doesn't care that much about it. The fixed version in in the MX repos: http://iso.mxrepo.com/mx/repo/pool/non- ... n-nonfree/

Though we haven't tested it since we switched over to the package that actually contains the binary files from Adobe. Adobe could break the downloader anytime they feel like it.

Bunsen-pepperflash from Bunsen Labs also works to download pepperflash.

[dasein]

What is strange is that Chromium and FF both have very good Flash, whereas in Opera and Vivaldi it still works, but not as well. From what I can tell, Chromium/FF are pointed at a different version of the plugin.

Not as strange as it seems, and not necessarily a sign that two different plugins are in use, as anyone who remembers startling historical differences in Flash performance between Chome and Firefox can attest.

Adobe's Flash player operates by creating a javascript "virtual machine" in which the content plays. Particularly with streamed content, the performance of this VM (including and in particular the JS interpreter) serves as the primary limiting factor on overall performance.

tl;dr: Flash performance is profoundly client-specific.