PeterUPDATE: the tutorial below is now out of date, as the final version of Flash Player 9 is now here! That means the beta will likely now be unavailable, and it's probably best to get the stable version. Please follow the final version tutorial. Thanks!
We have good news for all Linux users that have wanted to enjoy all that great Flash content on the web. For a while now, Adobe have had a public beta of Flash Player 9 for Linux available (and they've just released Beta 2 at the time of writing), and in this quick tutorial, we're going to install it.
First, download the beta 2 plugin and save that file to your desktop. Now, unfortunately we're going to have to use the Terminal here, but it's only for a couple of easy steps, so just bear with me and start your Terminal program. Just type in what you see here, pressing Enter after every line (and don't type the signs at the front!).
$ tar xzvf FP9_plugin_beta_112006.tar.gz
What that code does is gets you in the desktop folder, then extracts the .tar.gz file.
Now, for the next bit, we need to copy the plugin file into your browser's plugins folder. To do this, we temporarily need to give ourselves administrator access to the computer so we can copy the file.
If you're running Ubuntu (or a variant thereof)
> /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
[[enter your login password when prompted]]
If you're running most other distributions
[[enter the root (administrator) password when prompted]]
# cp flash-player-plugin-9.0.21.78/libflashplayer.so \
> /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
# exit
Now restart your browser and it should be installed. In most browsers, you can check it's installed properly by browsing to about:plugins and checking there's an entry for Shockwave Flash.
Enjoy!
While I've never had any problems with it, you should remember that Flash Player 9 for Linux is currently a beta (i.e. it isn't finished yet) and so it may not be 100% stable.
