Konqueror With Latest Adobe Flash HOWTO (Outdated)

30 December 2007

This page is outdated. In KDE4 Konqueror will work with the latest Adobe Flash plugin and there is now a 64-bit version of Flash available for Linux. I highly recommend you use one of these instead of the guide below but I’m leaving it here in case you need to use it for another reason.

I agree with Lubos. Flash sucks. However, most of us have or want to use it for things like YouTube or watching badgers.

As you may be aware the latest versions of Flash depend on XEmbed support which Konqueror lacks without various patches to KDELibs and KDEBase which haven’t been applied by my distribution and I couldn’t get working even when I manually patched the necessary parts of KDE myself. I was using the older versions but it appears they have outstanding and actively exploited security holes that they have only fixed in the XEmbed-supporting versions.

Mike needs his YouTube fix without haxors running rife on his box. Who can save him?

KMPlayer to the rescue!

KMPlayer is my media player of choice as it allows you to trivially switch between XINE, MPlayer and GStreamer backends and, as of version 0.10.0, has a nifty backend that allows you to use XEmbed-supporting plugins, including Adobe’s Flash plugin, which can then be embedded in Konqueror to allow Flash to work trivially.

Install KMPlayer (version 0.10.0c or higher). It is included in all the major distributions I’ve ever used. Ensure it is installed/compiled with the “NPP” backend enabled which allows the playback of Netscape XEmbed plugins (this depends on your distribution).
Run KMPlayer so it creates its config file. Close it. (This step probably isn’t necessary but it won’t do any harm)
Run the following commands:

kwriteconfig --file kmplayerrc \
  --group "application/x-shockwave-flash" --key player npp
kwriteconfig --file kmplayerrc \
  --group "application/x-shockwave-flash" --key plugin \
  /usr/lib/flashplugin-nonfree/libflashplayer.so

Change the “libflashplayer.so” section depending on where the Adobe Flash plugin was installed on your distribution. The above example is where it is installed on Gentoo. (People have replied below with where it is stored on various systems. If you can’t find yours, you probably have a locate program installed so trying running “locate libflashplayer.so” for an idea).
Open Konqueror and click “Settings > Configure Konqueror…“. In the new window navigate to “File Associations” in the left-hand panel and select “application/x-shockwave-flash”. Click the “Embedding” tab and click “Add…“. Select “Embedded MPlayer for KDE” from the new window. If it is not there then you may need to restart KDE or run “kbuildsycoca” from a terminal. Close all the opened windows.
Enjoy a working Flash in Konqueror!

What is wrong? You’re running a x8664 machine** _(like me) so the above doesn’t work? Never fear! If you manage to get a 32-bit version of **“knpplayer” (the small program that runs the plugins) and install that in your $PATH before the 64-bit version then it will all just work like magic! Note that you’ll need 32-bit versions of the various dependent libraries also (it seems just to be GTK, Cairo, X11 and DBus stuff).

Mike McQuaid