Get latest Flash player on Ubuntu

Question

I know, it's been asked before but I couldn't really get a satisfying answer for some details/backgrounds and I guess it's an important question for many.

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Some application seem only to be running with Adobe Flash 15 (or at least I know it does, because I have that version on my Windows Partition).

The official Adobe website says:

NOTE: Adobe Flash Player 11.2 will be the last version to target Linux as a supported platform. Adobe will continue to provide security backports to Flash Player 11.2 for Linux.

Some search on the web like "Ubuntu Adobe Flash 15" or similar does not return any good websites.

I found something that says Google's Chrome Browser should do the job (using a "pepper-based version"), and for Chromium there is an ppa.

Is it impossible to use this for Firefox too? Would it be a privacy risk?

Are there no alternative projects (I know it's closed source but there are so many so very bright people out there using something similar to wine but just for the plugin....)?

How about the Mac-Version? Shouldn't someone be able to port that one to Linux?

Solution 1

Flash player is completely dead for all operating systems as of 2021.

Install the latest version of flash player

These instructions will install the latest version of flash player for Chromium and it will also be updated automatically. In addition to installing flash player for Chromium, it will also install/reinstall Adobe flash player for Firefox, and it will also be updated automatically.

To install the latest version of flash player search the Dash (in Ubuntu releases before 17.10) or the Show Applications dashboard (in Ubuntu 17.10 or later) for Software & Updates and open the Software & Updates window. Click the Other Software tab in the Software & Updates window, and put a check mark in the checkbox to the left of where it says: Canonical Partners.

^{Software & Updates in Ubuntu 17.10}

Click the Close button to close the Software & Updates window.

Open the terminal and type:

sudo apt remove pepperflashplugin-nonfree # remove pepperflashplugin-nonfree if it's installed
sudo apt update  
sudo apt install adobe-flashplugin   
sudo apt install browser-plugin-freshplayer-pepperflash # 16.04 and later   

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Original answer

Don't use the instructions under this heading anymore because they are obsolete. Follow the updated "Install the latest version of flash player" instructions instead.

I found something that says Google's Chrome Browser should do the job (using a "pepper-based version"), and for Chromium there is an ppa.

There is no need to add a PPA to your software sources to install Pepper Flash Player 15 in the latest version of Chromium web browser from the Ubuntu Software Center.

In Ubuntu 14.04 and onward, Pepper Flash Player can be installed using the Ubuntu Software Center.

If a more recent version of Pepper Flash Player has been released and you want to update Pepper Flash Player to the latest version, you can do this from the terminal using the following command:

sudo update-pepperflashplugin-nonfree --install 

Pepper Flash Player cannot be updated with the following command anymore on 32-bit OSs since Google ended support for Chrome on 32-bit Linux in March, 2016. If you are using Ubuntu 32-bit were using Ubuntu 32-bit before March, 2016, you can update Pepper Flash Player to the latest version from the terminal using the following command:

sudo update-pepperflashplugin-nonfree:i386 --install

Either of these two commands will download the latest version of Google Chrome (the file is larger than 40MB) and then update only the Pepper Flash Player with the more recent version of Pepper Flash Player that is bundled with Google Chrome without installing Google Chrome.

If updating Pepper Flash Player to the latest version fails with an error like this:

ERROR: failed to retrieve status information from google : W: There is no public key available for the following key IDs:  
1397BC53640DB551  

It happens because Google changed its signing key. To fix it run the following commands:

gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 1397BC53640DB551
gpg --export --armor 1397BC53640DB551 | sudo sh -c 'cat >> /usr/lib/pepperflashplugin-nonfree/pubkey-google.txt'

...and then try to update Pepper Flash Player to the latest version again.

Solution 2

i have had the same problem, and you could try enter to enter this in the terminal:

 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
 sudo apt-get update
 sudo apt-get install freshplayerplugin

and it might work fine this way.

Comments

[kenn]

check out this project github.com/i-rinat/freshplayerplugin

[3244611user]

Cool! Thanks! Those are the things I was looking out for!

[3244611user]

Simply downloading and using Googles Chrome Browser [ google.com/chrome ] works in most cases (online games & with some tricks even netflix).

[3244611user]

This sounds nice. Testing it right now.

[3244611user]

Doesn't work out of the box on the site I'm testing. I will try to debug sometime.

[Seung]

Just a guess, but you may need to switch user agent. Details at the flash help page

[mchid]

@3244611user you may have to install manually to the wine-pipelight prefix using the wine flash installer

[Pilot6]

This PPA is not needed any more since the current Flash player can be installed from Ubuntu repos.