Adobe Flash Player, 64-bit

I am really surprised at the amount of postings that show you where to get the new Flash Player 10 (x86_64), but not really how to install it if all goes wrong. Yah, they’ll always have, “simply click double click on the RPM file and all will be well in the world.” kind of talk, but what happens if all is NOT well in the world!?  Luckily for me (and you), it always goes wrong – so I end up having to do a manual install every time.  Hopefully this post will help you figure all that out.

Where to Get It

Of course, you’ll need to know where to get this most fantastic program, debuting in Linux.  You think Adobe would make it a bit easier to find.  I had to do a Google search, but I guess since it is an alpha – only the truly persistent will find it.

http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html

What to Do With It

Once you’ve uncompressed the tarball you will have a simple “libflashplayer.so” file to work with.  What do you do with this .so file you ask?  You can copy or move it to your system’s shared flash player folder.  I’m using Fedora 10 and Firefox (both x86_64) so mine is located in “/usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins“.  That’s just a nice place to put it.

I know for the 32-bit versions, if you install it using an RPM or the Package Manger, it’ll put it in “/usr/lib/flash-plugin“.  It can be a combination of  places, but grab the overall concept first. Make the .so file available to multiple browsers on your machine, then refer to it.

Once you have it in a nice, safe place… create a symbolic link from your brower’s plugin directory.  Most of us are using Firfox so run the command:

$ ln -s /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so
/usr/lib64/firefox-3.0.5/plugins

Of course I’m running Firefox 64-bit.  If you’re not then change the “lib64″ directory to “lib” and if you’re running a different version of Firefox, change that too.

Verify That it Works

If you have Firefox open, simply close it and start it up again.  Check your installed plugins by typing in “about:plugins” in the address bar.  You should see “Shockwave Flash” in there some where.  If you don’t post a comment and I’ll try and help you.

If it’s there… and it should.  Visit any web site that has Flash and you’re good to go. I usually like to try multiple sites at a time just to make sure it doesn’t freeze up on me.  So; I’ll visit YouTube,  MSN and my web site (FergyTech), etc.

Now Give Me Praise for Helping You

Ha-ha, just joking.  I seriously hope this post helped.  Happy surfing you bleeding edge/early adopters you!

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