The Inevitable End of Adobe Flash Player

In The Linux Community

Thanks goes to NoobsLab.com for a great graphic

Adobe Flash Player is a thing of the past in the Ubuntu community, and you should remove it from your computer if you haven't all ready. There are two alternatives that are current and for as long as I have been using them, work equally as well ... Lightspark and Gnash. If you haven't all ready dumped Adobe Flash simply open a terminal [Ctrl] [Alt] ”T” and enter the following line and hit enter:

sudo apt-get purge adobe-flashplugin

it will ask you for your password, type it in and hit enter, then enter again to confirm the removal. I like to err on the side of preventing further issues so after the prompt returns type the following line and hit enter:

sudo apt-get purge adobe-flashplugin-installer

this will insure that the defunct and vulnerable piece of software will never happen to find its way back to your browser.

For those running Ubuntu 14.04 (the current long-term support release of Ubuntu) if you have Universe repository enabled Gnash is available through the Ubuntu Software Center or you can download the .deb package from ubuntuupdates.org making sure you download the correct architecture for your system.

Gnash is the Preferred replacement for Flash in Ubuntu but many find that Lightspark has a couple features that are beyond what gnash has … so I have installed them both and can toggle them as needed in the browsers add-ons manager, although so far Gnash is really the one doing all the grunt work.

Again for those running Ubuntu 14.04 if you have the Universe repository enabled it is available through the Ubuntu Software Center. Alternately you can download the .deb package from ubuntuupdates.org.