KDE, Firefox, and Flash...

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Mon Nov 24, 2014 11:55 pm Post subject: KDE, Firefox, and Flash...

I have been reading about the sound issues with Flash in Gentoo and after a few hours of trying things, all of which I have undone afterwards, I cannot get Flash to play sound. I have KDE and ALSA working fine, but Flash refuses to play sound. I do not have Pulse installed and do not care to unless I am forced to. If I have to, well, I have to!

Note that I did follow the ALSA guide on the wiki. Still no go. What should I look at first? Oh and yes, I wish Flash would die a horrible death and people would use HTML5.
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Jaglover · Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2014 12:01 am Post subject:

Currently if you want flash you use Chromium with pepperflash, and if you want Java you use Firefox. That's the way it is anno 2014.
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The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2014 1:18 am Post subject:

Really? Flash works flawlessly in Debian 32bit and 64bit in Firefox/Iceweasel. Why can't it be made to work here?
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Jaglover · Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2014 1:20 am Post subject:

Oh, probably it can be made to work. Just the flash for Linux is terribly outdated. While pepperflash is not.
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The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2014 1:27 am Post subject:

Debian uses Adobe Flash, and I know it is 11. Adobe killed Flash everywhere but got too much push-back from Linux and Windows users. They froze Linux at 11 and keep pushing security updates, but no new versions. Windows gets love, but I only use Windows to game on.

Would downloading the latest Linux tar from Adobe possibly work?
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Jaglover · Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2014 2:06 am Post subject:

No, the ABI is different for pepperflash. My Chromium is using version 15,0,0,223, Firefox version is 11,2,202,418.
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The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2014 2:27 am Post subject:

So why won't pepperflash work in Firefox? I do not care for Chome or Safari despite knowing I am on Linux and not Windows.
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Jaglover · Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2014 2:39 am Post subject:

There is PPAPI and NPAPI. I could keep writing but I'd think if you Google these terms you will get more complete answer.
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The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2014 3:27 am Post subject:

No problem, I'll dig into it. It just seems silly how all of the Debian derivatives have working Flash and Gentoo, a non-binary OS, does not. This is a deal-breaker for 99% of the people out there since so many web developers are lazy and use Flash instead of good HTML5 and CSS. I am still trying to find a solution to get it working in FF. If I find a reasonable one, I will post it. Allowing Flash to lock my card out (DOS anybody?) is not a solution.
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Jaglover · Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2014 3:35 am Post subject:

The_Great_Sephiroth,

methinks you kind of missed the point. Firefox and Flash works in Gentoo. It works for me. I'm using pure ALSA. The whole KDE world is terra incognita for me, I have no clue why Firefox+Flash is not working for you.

Sorry for confusing you.
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The Doctor · Moderator Joined: 27 Jul 2010 Posts: 2678

I'm using i3, and flash works just fine with alsa. My useflags are

Sakarias · n00b Joined: 12 May 2007 Posts: 60

Amarok, xbmc, vlc works, but no sound firefox & flash. I use Nvidia and HDMI output. I can listen sound with headphone. I don't use pulse.
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The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2014 1:53 pm Post subject:

I read up on NPAPI and PPAPI. I feel that Google is forcing users to go their way, but since you must use Chrome, they're trying to gain users. Not cool, but I need to do more reading to understand the entire thing. What ever happened to "If it isn't broken, don't fix it!"?

Anyway, I will verify that I did not build FF with the KDE flag. If I did I will rebuild it. Same for Flash, but I thought Flash was a binary download, not built? I will report back soon. Thanks for the help!

*UPDATE*

Rebuilding both FF and Flash with "-kde -pulseaudio" did not fix the issue. I must be missing something due to lack of experience with Gentoo. What should I try next? This is 64bit Gentoo. Again, no Pulse right now, only ALSA, and audio works in every other app on the system.
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mir3x · Guru Joined: 02 Jun 2012 Posts: 455

I dont use flash now, but when I had it installed there was some adobe-flash entry in kde system-settings,
have u tried configuring it (I guess u need adobe-flash with kde flag )?
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The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2014 7:24 pm Post subject:

It was there before and after, but it did not have any audio settings. Just cache, update, etc.

Sadly, I zeroed the disk and installed Debian 64bit. This particular laptop was sold to a friend who wanted Linux, and he wanted what I am moving to. I wanted to get it to him so I had to go with what works out of the box for now. We can always switch him over after I have it working and know how to do it on my own hardware. I will be replacing Debian 64bit on this (my work) laptop this coming weekend. I can then troubleshoot these issues and document what makes things work.

I did have other issues as well. The kuser tool would not accept anything for the root password, right or wrong, I hadn't figured out how to get the Network Manager applet, and the generic packages for KDE had installed things we didn't want or need, like Kopete. I'd rather use my stuff as a testbed, not something going out the door, you know what I mean?

Anyway I am not sour here and am pumped to get Gentoo working on it. I will say that Gentoo is WAY faster than the same setup in Debian on that system. I am highly impressed with the performance of Gentoo, but now I have to LEARN the ins and outs.
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mrbassie · l33t Joined: 31 May 2013 Posts: 772 Location: over here

I have had flash sound issues too, had to create an .asoundrc to get it working.

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 2:58 pm Post subject:

Yes, I did that. I do not like only being allowed to play one sound at a time though. Once I load my friend's other laptop with Debian, I will be loading this laptop with Gentoo and I can focus on figuring it out.
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The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Sun Dec 07, 2014 2:17 pm Post subject:

Where can I find pepperflash? I am willing to give Chromium a chance, but I cannot find pepperflash.

*EDIT*

Also, will pepperflash use hardware acceleration? Kind of a big thing to me.
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Jaglover · Posted: Sun Dec 07, 2014 2:44 pm Post subject:

www-plugins/chrome-binary-plugins
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The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Sun Dec 07, 2014 3:06 pm Post subject:

Ah, I was searching for things like "pepper". Does this package use my hardware acceleration like Adobe Flash?
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Jaglover · Posted: Sun Dec 07, 2014 3:14 pm Post subject:

Not sure, it seems I do not have it with nVidia blob.
When installed go to chrome://plugins and see if everythng is in order, then chrome://gpu will tell you what features are enabled/supported.
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The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2014 3:16 pm Post subject:

Jag, not sure why, but after zeroing the disk and installing everything again, Flash works in FF without a hitch. I am using it right now to listen to a local radio station on iHeart Radio. Guess I am good.
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Jaglover · Posted: Wed Dec 10, 2014 12:17 am Post subject:

I have Firefox and flash, too. The other day I tried to play a Youtube video and there was no sound ... then I started my MythTV frontend and FF flash suddenly started making sound ... go figure.
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