I really thought we were past the point when a major browser plugin would fail to work on Linux. But once again this nearly unheard of “64-bit” technology is causing incompatibility problems on my favorite OS. I guess it has only been about five years since AMD started offering its Athlon 64; such a short period of time in the slow-moving, dinosaur field of IT is surely why Adobe does not yet offer Flash Player support on 64-bit operating systems.
Adobe’s solution:
To use Flash Player to view Flash content on a 64-bit operating system, you must run a 32-bit browser.
A less painful solution seems to be nspluginwrapper. I installed the two RPMs from their site on my 64-bit openSUSE 10.2 system, restarted firefox, and found that flash was back online.
Opera still seems to have a flat-lined flash, though I’ve managed to get it working on my Kubuntu system by using a 64-bit development build of the browser.
Running desktop Linux has definitely become easier over the years, but it still has its moments. At least I no longer have to recompile my kernel to use a USB mouse.
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