If you follow me on Twitter you would know that I have been messing around with Ubuntu for a few days.
Ubuntu’s Firefox is known to crash unexpectedly (it turns grey). One of the major causes of this happening is the incompatibility of Firefox’s Flash programs.
After a fresh install of Ubuntu and visit a website with flash, the missing plugins yellow bar drops asking if you wish to download the missing plugins. The problem is, no matter which one you choose chances are Firefox will begin to crash each time flash is requested.
To fix it, here is what you do:
1. Delete the installed flash program. For example, if you installed Swfdec go to System>Administration>Synaptic Package Manager and type in “swfdec” within the search feature. Then uninstall the installed files. In my case: “libswfdec-0.6-90″ and “swfdec-mozilla”.
2. Open up your terminal by going to Applications > Accessories > Terminal
3. Make sure your apts are updated by typing: sudo apt-get update. If there are any warnings about public keys, you need to fix them by downloading the appropriate key.
To download an apt-key use:
gpg –keyserver subkeys.pgp.net –recv KEY_HERE
gpg –export KEY_HERE | sudo apt-key add -
4. Install Adobe Flash player through the terminal: sudo apt-get install adobe-flashplugin
5. Restart Firefox (or just start it). You can check to make sure you have it installed by typing this within the url bar: about:plugins
All finished! No more crashing and you can now visit Youtube, Hulu, and Pandora without the mess.
Written: Feb 26, 2009
Armand
February 28, 2009 @ 8:58 am
I’ve been using Ubuntu and I don’t know if Firefox will crash with flash. I think it will be automatically fixed by updating it. Thanks for the information, any way.
Gary R. Hess
February 28, 2009 @ 1:10 pm
@Armand the reason this article was written was because I found others with the same problem. Ubuntu Firefox is known to have severe crashing problems and flash is one of the main causes. And no, sudo apt-get update does not fix it.