Installing browser plug-ins
From Mandriva Community Wiki
This page explains how to install common browser plug-ins such as Adobe Flash, Java and multimedia plug-ins in Mandriva i586 and x86_64 editions. To see which plug-ins are already installed in your web browser, type the address about:plugins in the URL bar of your browser.
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Flash plug-ins
Different plug-ins exist for viewing Flash content in browsers. Swfdec and Gnash are two open source and Free Software plug-ins which work natively on both i586 and x86_64. While they can be used to view most common Flash video animations on sites as YouTube, they can give problems on more complex Flash content. Adobe's proprietary Flash plug-in for Linux should be more complete, but it's not open source and there exists only an i586 version of this plug-in. The i586 Adobe Flash plug-in, can also be used on Mandriva x86_64 by using nspluginwrapper.
By preference, you only have one of these plug-ins at the same time installed. This way, you are sure that your preferred Flash plug-in is used, and not some other plug-in which is installed at the same time.
SWfdec
- Install the swfdec-mozilla package with Mandriva's software installation tool (Install & Remove Software in your applications menu)
Gnash
- Install gnash-firefox-plugin with Mandriva's software installation tool (Install & Remove Software in your applications menu). If you use Konqueror, install gnash-konqueror-plugin
Adobe Flash
Note: this plug-in will be installed by default if you installed Mandriva Powerpack or Mandriva One. If you don't have much experience with Mandriva, by preference install one of these Mandriva editions instead of the Free edition (see Choosing the right edition).
- Use Mandriva's software installation tool to make sure gnash-firefox-plugin and swfdec-mozilla are not installed, so they certainly cannot interfere with Adobe's Flash plug-in. If necessary, remove them from your system.
- If you are using Mandriva x86_64 edition, make sure all media sources are configured, both i586 and x86_64 sources (see Making more software available).
- On Mandriva x86_64, use the software installer to make sure the nspluginwrapper package is installed
- Go to http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash and choose to download the Flash RPM for Linux. A window will pop-up asking whether you want to save the file on your disk or whether you want to install it with the Software Installer. Choose the latter option. The Flash plug-in and all the libraries it requires, will be installed automatically
- As an alternative to the previous step, you can also install the flash-player-plugin package with Mandriva's Software Installer if you have configured the PLF i586 non-free repository
- If you are using Mandriva x86_64 and Flash is still not shown in about:plugins after installing the plug-in, make sure libflashplayer.so exists in either /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins or in /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins (if necessary, copy or link this file from /usr/lib/flash-plugin), open a terminal (Terminal or Konsole in the applications menu - Tools) and execute this command:
nspluginwrapper -v -a -i
- If you don't have sound working in Flash animations, make sure you have the packages libflashsupport and libpulseaudio0 installed.
Java
- Make sure all media sources are configured, (see Making more software available).
- On Mandriva 2008 and 2008 Spring (2008.1) i586 edition, install the package java-1.6.0-sun-plugin with the Software installer (Install & Remove Software in your applications menu).
- On Mandriva 2008 Spring (2008.1) x86_64 edition, install the package java-1.7.0-icedtea-plugin. Note however that this is a development version of Java 1.7 and is unsupported. It may not work correctly in all cases.
- On Mandriva 2009.0 (both i586 and x86_64 editions), install the package java-1.6.0-openjdk-plugin.
Audio and video plug-ins
To listen to sound and watch movies which are not Flash based, you need either Totem's mozilla plug-in (package totem-mozilla) or mplayerplug-in (or its descendant gecko-mediaplayer). Which one works best for you may vary, so in case you have problems with one of these, try another one.
Mandriva installs Totem's plug-in by default if you installed GNOME or KDE.
In order to use your chosen plug-in, it's best to make sure you only have one of these installed at the same time.
If you are using Konqueror as your web browser, you can use either Kaffeine or KMplayer for embedded sound and video.
To install one of these plug-ins, start up Mandriva's software installation tool (Install & Remove Software in your applications menu) and search on the plug-in name you want.
