[Sussex] Flash on Etch AMD64

[Gavin Stevens]

Steve,

On Sat, 02 Feb 2008 06:39:14 +0000
Steve Dobson <steve at dobson.org> wrote:

> Gavin
> 
> On Sat, 2008-02-02 at 00:55 +0000, Gavin Stevens wrote:
> > I recently built myself a new AMD64 machine to replace the old
> > AMD300 K6 that died just before my presentation in November.
> 
> Welcome to the wonderful world of 64-bit computing.  Don't things run
> nice and fast now? :-)

Yes indeed - it feels very crisp & agile.
> 
> > I am very happy with the new machine, but there doesn't seem to be a
> > suitable version of Flash for amd64.
> 
> Adobe (to the best of my knowledge) do not provide their flash player
> for AMD-64 Linux.  However as AMD64 can run 32-bit as well it is  
> possible to  set up a 32-bit chroot environment and then run a 32-bit
> iceweasel to get flash to  work.
> 
> At least that was the old way of doing it.
> 
> > I have a couple of apparent solutions I found on the www that I will
> > try, but I was wondering if anyone here has had any experience of
> > solving this problem. (Any free alternatives to Adobe Flash are also
> > welcome).
> 
> Recently a 64-bit wrapper for the 64-bit iceweasel has been developed
> so you can run the 32-bit flash plugin.
> 
> If that sounds all to complicated for you then just:
> 
>    # apt-get install nspluginwrapper
> 
> Here is a webpage on it:
> 
>    http://www.crazysquirrel.com/computing/debian/amd64.jspx
> 
> However, this new package is only available in lenny (testing) and sid
> (experimental) if you are running etch (stable) you are going to have
> to either:
> 
> 1). Use the 32-bit chroot mode.  I never bothered with this.  If I
> needed to surf a site with flash (i.e. youtube) then I would move to
> my 32-bit laptop to do it.
> 
> 2). Upgrade to lenny.
> 
> I have switched both my AMD64 workstation and my i686 laptop to lenny
> for some months now.  In fact the workstation has been on lenny for
> over a year.  I've had very few issues.  
> 
> If you do take the lenny route then I would recommend going duel boot
> for lenny and etch.  With disks being so big these days using 10G for
> lenny and 10G for etch is really a no brainer.  This just means that
> you need to partition your disk so that you can share the same /home
> partition or, do as I did, and put the second boot on a second drive.
> 
Thanks very much for these thoughts - I shall decide soon what to do. In
the meantime, I have my 32-bit Pentium 4 machine (& the kiosk server, &
a P3 850) for sites needing flash.

Gavin.