[Gllug] Re: Installing Flash player on Debian

[Pete Ryland]

On Sat, Jun 04, 2005 at 12:35:47 +0100, Peter Joanes wrote:
> On Friday 03 June 2005 22:08, Mark Preston wrote:
> >  tar -xzvf install_flash_player_7_linux.tar.gz
> >  cd install_flash_player_7_linux/
> >  ./flashplayer-installer
> >
> > Works for me.
> 
> I would like distributions to work to avoid this. I don't want to run an 
> installer on my system and hopefully I won't have to because it's easy enough 
> to integrate most programs (even proprietary) with the native package 
> management scheme.
> I want to be able to find out which package a file belongs to, i.e. in this 
> case, like this:
> # equery b /usr/lib32/nsbrowser/plugins/flashplayer.xpt
> [ Searching for file(s) /usr/lib32/nsbrowser/plugins/flashplayer.xpt in *... ]
> net-www/netscape-flash-7.0.25
> 
> I think most distributions have some equivalent of this, and alternatively I'd 
> prefer just a tarball, so I don't feel that "./flashplayer-installer" works 
> for me.

The problem with doing that for non-free software is normally that the
author(s) of that software want you to agree to a licence screen before
letting you download the software.  This is very true in this case, and in
fact it would be illegal for a distribution to carry this software as a
native package without explicit written permission from Macromedia.  What
Debian does in this case (and others) is provide a package which gets you to
download the tarball (and agree with the licence) separately and place it in
/tmp (or other specified location) which the package then installs in a
managable way like all the other packages.

You shouldn't use non-free software anyway.  Use GPL Flash instead:

http://gplflash.sourceforge.net/

Yeah, I know it's inferior, but it's apparently moving again after five
years of inactivity, with the FSF now even trying to get people interested
in joining the effort.

Pete
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