Adobe Flash Player is a Lightweight plug-in that is integrated with your browser and allows the user to stream audio, video, flash-based games and other media content on Flash-based sites and platforms. For the Google Chrome browser, flash player is not required as it comes with its own version of flash NPAPI pre-installed. On the other hand, Firefox browser will pop-up notification for installing flash player when you visit sites like Vimeo and YouTube. So, if you are using the Firefox browser, you will need to manually install the flash player. Other than just Chrome and Firefox, Flash player is also supported by other browsers like internet explorer, Safari and Opera. Adobe Flash player can be installed on different OS like Windows, Linux, Mac OS, and Android.
In this article, we will explain how to install a Flash player on a Linux operating system using the Terminal. We will use Firefox browser in order to enable the flash player.
We have run the commands and procedures described in this article on a Debian 10 OS.
Step 1: Download Adobe flash player
Download Adobe flash player from the Adobe official website. Go to the following link.
https://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/otherversions/
Now select your operating system and then the flash player required version from the drop-down menu. Then click Download now button to download Adobe flash player.
Alternatively, you can also download flash player using the wget command. Simply type wget followed by the flash player download link as follows:
$ wget https://fpdownload.adobe.com/get/flashplayer/pdc/32.0.0.255/flash_player_npapi_linux.x86_64.tar.gz
Use any one of the above methods to download Adobe flash player and then move to the next step.
Step 2: Extract downloaded archive
Extract the downloaded archive using the tar command in Terminal. Type tar zxpvf followed by the downloaded setup name as follows:
$ tar zxpvf flash_player_npapi_linux.x86_64.tar.gz
Step 3: Install Flash Player
Next in this step, copy the libflashplayer.so to Mozilla plugins directory using the cp command. For this, execute the below command in Terminal:
$ sudo cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/Mozilla/plugins/
Now copy the flash player configurations files to /usr directory using below command,
Then execute the following command to copy the configuration files to /usr directory :
$ sudo cp –r usr/* /usr
The installation of Adobe flash player is successfully completed. Now you can access flash-based websites.
Step 4: Verify Flash Player installation
Now you can verify to make sure that the flash player has been installed correctly. Restart your Firefox browser. Click the below link to open the Adobe flash player help page and then click on Check Now button under point number 1.
https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player.html
By doing so, you will see the system information that will include Flash player version along with your browser and operating system’s name.
Step 5: Enable the Flash Player
Now scroll down to the point number 5 in the same Adobe flash player help page and see if you can view an animation running in the window:
If you do not see any animation, then click on the Run Adobe Flash link on the animation window. A pop-up window will appear, click on Allow to enable flash on your browser.
Now you will be able to see the animation. This animation makes sure that the Flash player is successfully installed and enabled on your system.
That is all there is to it! We have learned how to download and install Adobe flash player on a Debian OS. Now enjoy playing games and watching streaming multimedia files on your browser using the flash player.