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OK finally Adobe has decided to release Flash Player 9 in Beta Form for Linux. I’ve decided to throw together a quick how to on how to install it on Ubuntu Edgy. This should hold true however for most flavours of Ubuntu as well.

1. Open Synaptic Package manager
2. Click on the search button and type “Flash”
3. Click the box beside any of the currently installed flash-plugins, this should be flashplugin-nonfree, and select for a complete removal
4. Now click apply and let Synaptic remove the package
5. We are now ready to download and install the flashplayer 9 plugin
6. Point your browser to “http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer9.html”, and select the “Download Installer for Linux” link. Remember where you save this file because we’ll need it next. Close down your browser when you are done since we don’t want it open while we install the plugin
7. Open your favourite terminal and navigate to the directory which you saved the plugin, and execute the following command:

tar -vxzf FP9_plugin_beta_101806.tar.gz

8. You will now have a directory called flash-player-plugin-9.0.1.21.55 or something similar, navigate to this directory
9. You will now need to copy the library “libflashplayerplugin.so” to “/usr/lib/firefox/plugins/”, execute the following command:

sudo cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/

10. Navigate to your favourite flash enabled website and enjoy having the latest and greatest flash player.

I hope this helps, please post if you have any problems or further questions. I hope this helps everyone out.

Update …
Treviño from Ubuntu Forums was kind enough to pack the player into a package. You can now get the files from his repository at http://3v1n0.tuxfamily.org/dists/dapper/3v1n0/

Download the deb and install it

kungfuice Computers, Technology, Ubuntu

A friend sent me an email with this. If this doesn’t change your mind about becoming a peeping tom you definitely have problems.

kungfuice General

If you have been noticing messages in your logs about unknown key presses I’ve found a solution that gets rid of them.

I had been getting messages like this in my messages log and wanted to get rid of them

kernel: [17204628.240000] atkbd.c: Unknown key pressed (translated set 2, ode 0xd9 on isa0060/serio0).
[17204628.240000] atkbd.c: Use ’setkeycodes e059 keycode’ to make it known.

[17204603.280000] atkbd.c: Unknown key released (translated set 2, code 0×81 on isa0060/serio0).
[17204603.280000] atkbd.c: Use ’setkeycodes e001 keycode keycode’ to make it know.

These errors were randomly generated when I used any keys on my keyboard. There are documented cases of having similar problems with media keys on laptops but nothing to do with regular keys.

I decided that since I was not having any problems using my keyboard that I would simply assign these keys to some empty key code to appease the system.

This is how you do it:
Edit The File:”/usr/share/hotkey-setup/generic.hk”

sudo gedit /usr/share/hotkey-setup/generic.hk

Place these lines in the file, remember to use the values of the keys that appear in your logs, don’t just copy and paste

setkeycodes e059 254
setkeycodes e001 255

Now simply restart the hotkey init script by doing:

sudo /etc/init.d/hotkey-setup restart

Voila those messages should stop appearing in your logs

kungfuice Computers, Technology, Ubuntu

I’ll start this story at the very beginning. My girlfriend was in need of a laptop, she’s a school teacher so she was not in search of anything too fancy. I tried my hardest to get her into a Mac, but she was looking for something cheaper since she had just finished school.

We went to a couple of different places, ultimately coming across an Acer laptop from Staples Business Depot. They had a very good deal on, so we decided to buy right away. My girlfriend decided to get the extended service plan from Business Depot just in case anything happened to the laptop. Although I knew these were bogus tricks, for the extra $50 I figured why not.

We took the laptop home, and I set it up with the usual Spyware and Virus software so that it wouldn’t goto hell too quickly.

My girlfriend was so happy to finally have her very own laptop, but this happiness would not last very long. After about a week the laptop would not power up, my girlfriend brought it to me to have a look and even I was unable to get the thing to start up. We took the now broken laptop to Business Depot where they told us that we had to take it to Acer. My girlfriend was enraged since she had paid the extra money for the extended service plan and expected Business Depot to honour it in a more appropriate fashion. After causing a bit of a fuss they finally decided to take the laptop and told us they would call us.

Business Depot called us, and they informed us that they would be replacing the laptop with a new one, which was fine since it was basically brand new and didn’t have anything of importance on it. My girlfriend got her new laptop and was in love all over again.

The next problem started when her keyboard began to stop working. Rows of keys would stop working, and she wouldn’t be able to do her work. Again we took the laptop back to Business Depot, and again we were faced with them trying to get us to take it to Acer, ultimately we convinced them to look at it, and they did, replacing the keyboard.

Once we got the laptop back everything was fine until about a week later when the keyboard started to malfunction again. I realized that there must be a deeper issue causing this, so we decided to talk to Acer this time instead of dealing with the idiots at Business Depot.

I got on the phone and after waiting about an hour on hold was greated by a very friendly support technician. He informed us that they would pickup the laptop from us and would take a look at what was causing the keyboard failures. He explained that they would replace whatever it was that was causing the problem. I was very happy that they were going to finally fix this problem, and that they were going to pay for shipping there and back, and that we would get the laptop back within 1 week.

The technician set everything up for us, and told us that purolator would by the next day between 1pm-4pm to pickup the laptop. Although the pickup time was somewhat inconvenient we managed to be there for 1pm the only problem being that no one ever showed up. We were a little upset that we took the time to be at home for the purolator man to come, and he never showed.

Nevertheless we were leaving on vacation and decided to leave it till we came back.

Fast forward a little bit and the problem has been delegated to me. I schedule another pickup and again the same thing happened, except this time I was on the phone right away with Acer, who then informed me that they were scheduling the pickup at the place of purchase. I found this to be quite odd since no one had ever mentioned that to us, and even more odd considering they were taking my personal address information. After dealing with the technician for a little while i was then informed that I could have the laptop picked up at my personal address by request, which I requested immediately.

The pickup was now set for the next day, again I was at home for 1:00pm, and the purolator man showed up at around 2:00pm, finally I thought we are going to get this piece of junk fixed. I proceeded to hand the package to the purolator man who informed me that I needed a waybill. “What waybill?” I asked.

Long story short, he informed me that he had no idea who had setup the pickup, or even that there was someone who had scheduled a pickup. So instead of Acer scheduling a pickup at my location and attaching thhe pickup address and drop off address they merely just scheduled purolator to come to my house to pickup and package that could be going anywhere.

This is ridicolous, So now we still have this broken laptop, and I have to get back on the phone with Acer again, and wait no hold for another hour, only to fix something that many manufacturers would have already replaced with far less effort.

So ultimately what can you take away from this

• Don’t Buy An Acer Laptop If You Ever Plan On Dealing With Their Support
• Don’t Buy A Laptop From Staples Business Depot
• Don’t Purchase Extended Warranties From Your Place Of Purchase They Are Garbage
• Don’t Trust Anything Unless You Have It In Writting

Now if anyone needs me I’ll be on hold with Acer for the next hour

kungfuice Computers