new to ubuntu

Before upgrading to Ubuntu 9.04, you should know that users are reporting that they are unable to hear sound while watching flash video. And it has been reported as a bug on launchpad.

After I upgraded to jaunty jackalope, I tried to watch a video on youtube but there was no audio. When I played an mp3 file I could hear it okay.

I tried to follow a ubuntu geek tutorial to fix the problem but it did not work for me. You have to install about a dozen packages in the synaptic manager and change sound settings.

Possible Solution

1. Uninstall flash through Applications> Add/Remove. I removed Macromedia Flash plugin.

Now you will manually install Flash. The following is based on an article from howtogeek.

2. Download Flash Player directly from Adobe’s website. Choose .tar.gz for Linux.

3. After the file downloads, right click it and Extract Here.

4. Open the folder named install_flash_player_10_linux. Go to Edit> Preferences. Under the Behavior tab, select Ask Each Time under the Executuble Text File heading. Then Close.

5. Make sure Firefox is closed and double click on flashplayer-installer. Choose Run in Terminal.

6. Follow the instructions in the terminal window. Installation is complete.

When you go to this flash player page, it should show that the latest version 10,0,22,87 is installed.

Now I can hear audio while playing flash videos. I hope it works for you.

On December 4, 2007 Adobe released version 9,0,115,0 of Flash Player. Ubuntu users who try to update to the newest version may get a md5sum mismatch error because the installer was updated but its file name was not changed. (MD5sum verifies file integrity by comparing the hashes of the original file and downloaded file. A hash is an alphanumeric string.)

This is the error message displayed in the terminal window.

Download done.
md5sum mismatch install_flash_player_9_linux.tar.gz
The Flash plugin is NOT installed.

Solutions:

1. Manually install Flash through adobe.com.

2. Or install an unofficial package with instructions from tombuntu.

3. Ubuntu documentation recommends enabling proposed updates which will install a fixed version of flash player. Go to System> Administration> Software Sources. Select the Updates tab, and enable Pre-released Updates (gusty-proposed). If this doesn’t work, Launchpad has further instructions.

Update: February 6, 2008

Today there was a recommended update to fix the md5 error.

Before I installed the update, I ran Adobe’s Flash version test which showed version 9,0,48,0.

I installed the update and went back to the version test to see if I successfully upgraded to 9,0,115,0. But I received a message, “Click here to download plugin.” I assumed that Flash was uninstalled and tried to install it in Firefox.

But I got another error saying that Flash was already installed.

I restarted Firefox and Ubuntu but Flash would still not work. So I decided to manually install Flash. Fortunately, I found an article at howtogeek which details how to install Flash manually.

1. Download Flash Player directly from Adobe’s website. Choose Option 1: .tar.gz.

2. After the file downloads, right click it and Extract Here.

3. Open the folder named install_flash_player_9_linux. Go to Edit> Preferences. Under the Behavior tab, select Ask Each Time under the Executuble Text File heading. Then Close.

4. Make sure Firefox is closed and double click on flashplayer-installer. Choose Run in Terminal.

5. Follow the instructions in the terminal window. (You have to press Enter twice and then type y for yes.) Installation is complete.

6. The flash version test should now display 9,0,115,o.