Ubuntu / Linux news and application reviews.

Not so long ago I was telling you about Fresh Player Plugin, a new wrapper that's currently in alpha, which allows Linux users to use Pepper Flash (which is bundled with Google Chrome) in Firefox and other NPAPI-compatible web browsers.

Firefox Fresh Player Plugin

Well, in just over a week, Fresh Player Plugin evolved a lot and in my test, I actually didn't encounter any major issues: the sound works, video playback works with YouTube and other websites, full-screen videos work with multi-monitor setups, etc. So I've decided to upload Fresh Player Plugin to the main WebUpd8 PPA so you can test it easily and stay up to date with the latest code from GIT.

As a reminder, the latest Adobe Flash Player versions are available on Linux only through Google Chrome, while other browsers are stuck with version 11.2. 

The Adobe Flash Player plugin that's bundled with Google Chrome (it's no longer bundled with Chrome) for Google Chrome is offered in the form of a PPAPI (or Pepper Plugin API) plugin and Mozilla isn't interested in adding support for it. 

That's why Rinat Ibragimov decided to create this wrapper so Firefox users can use the latest Pepper Flash from Google Chrome.

Also, the Fresh Player Plugin page has an important security note that you should read: "[...] the API itself doesn't make any sandboxing, it only allows sandboxed implementations. This particular implementation doesn't implement any sandbox. That means that if any malicious code breaks through plugin security, there are no additional barriers".


Install Fresh Player Plugin in Ubuntu via PPA


Update: FreshPlayerPlugin is now available in the official Ubuntu 15.10 and 16.04. You can continue to use the PPA to get newer versions though. To install the version available in the official Ubuntu 16.04 and 15.10 repositories, use the following command:
sudo apt-get install browser-plugin-freshplayer-pepperflash


1. Install Fresh Player Plugin in Ubuntu (via PPA), by using the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install browser-plugin-freshplayer-pepperflash
You can also download the deb from HERE but installing it without adding the PPA means you won't get updates!

2. Fresh Player Plugin is just a wrapper for libpepflashplayer.so so it needs this file. You can obtain it by simply installing the adobe-flashplugin package (it's in the Partner repository so make sure that's enabled in Software & Updates, on the Other Software tab):
sudo apt install adobe-flashplugin
    3. Optional (only use it if you want to tweak various settings): configure Fresh Player Plugin

    Here you'll find an example Fresh Player Plugin configuration - to use it, save this file, rename it to "freshwrapper.conf" and copy it under ~/.config/

    Use this configuration file to change the path to libpepflashplayer.so or to tweak the sound buffer if you have shuttering sound.

    The configuration options available in this file are pretty self-explanatory - you can configure the lower and higher bound for the audio buffer size, enable/disable accelerated rendering ("enable_3d"), change the device scale (useful for high DPI screens), set the fullscreen width or height if you have issues with this, change the path to libpepflashplayer.so along with command line arguments (like enabling hardware video decoding).

    To report bugs or help with its development, see the Fresh Player Plugin GitHub page.