Trying to get video capability working under Ubuntu 11.10

Posted 10-09-2012 at 05:12 PM by flshope
Updated 10-09-2012 at 05:15 PM by flshope (Took me until now to figure out how to get out of draft mode)

Problem description: I am struggling to get a working video capability on my Pogo2003 machine, which was recently upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10. My specific problem is that I cannot display the magazines from https://www.zinio.com. The Zinio site requires Adobe Flash Player. I use three browsers: Opera 12, Firefox 15, and Chrome 18; Opera is always my first choice. After accessing Zinio and opening a magazine, Opera reports "Shockwave Flash has crashed"; Firefox puts up a mostly blank screen but no messages; and Chrome reports "Adobe Flash 10 required."

The "Adobe Flash Plugin Installer", which provides Flash to Firefox and Chrome, is installed.

To research this problem, I looked at

https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu

and found information at

https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu...uestion/188140

Recommends running the following commands from the terminal:

sudo apt-get --purge remove adobe-flash-properties-gtk:i386 adobe-flashplugin:i386 browser-plugin-gnash gnash gnash-common

sudo dpkg -P flashplugin-installer

after which the Flash Plugin Installer was reinstalled using the Software Center.

This process had fixed the same video display problem on my Pogo2011 when I first upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10. However, so far, this has not worked on my Pogo2003 running Ubuntu 11.10. Still, none of the three browsers will play videos. The identical problem was occurring on Pogo2003 running Ubuntu 11.04. I was never able to get videos to work then either.

I wonder if there is a hardware incompatibility between my nVidia card and Adobe Flash. I believe, even under the old Red Hat 9 (overwritten by the Ubuntu 11.04 installation), that I could never play videos, either.

So this problem remains unsolved. If I find a fix, I will report it here.

[This blog entry was "stuck" in draft mode, and I just figured out how to get it to published status. Sorry for being so thick.]

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	If you think it's a video incompatibility, have you tried other drivers? I'm not familiar with the i386 drivers, but I have heard good things about Bumblebee, which is for Debian, but I would think would be out for ubuntu as well
	Posted 10-19-2012 at 08:12 AM by Shammyhealz

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shammyhealz

If you think it's a video incompatibility, have you tried other drivers? I'm not familiar with the i386 drivers, but I have heard good things about Bumblebee, which is for Debian, but I would think would be out for ubuntu as well

Thanks for your thoughts. Sorry for not replying until now. I must have missed the email notification about your comment. I'll look into Bumblebee.

I have tried one nVidia driver that Ubuntu Software Center offers, but it won't install due to dependency problems.

Posted 11-17-2012 at 05:57 PM by flshope flshope is offline

This machine, which I call Pogo2003, was upgraded to Ubuntu 12.04 some time ago. Unfortunately, that upgrade did not resolve the video problem. That problem is that none of my browsers (Firefox, Opera, and Chromium -- all at current versions) will display most videos and specifically will not work with the Zinio magazine site. Opera says Shockwave Flash has crashed; the other two browsers don't do anything. All three browsers work ok on my Pogo2011 machine, which has a newer graphics card.

One suspected source of the problem was that the Ubuntu Software Center (USC) declined to install the recommended video driver [NVidia binary X.Org driver ('version 96' driver)] due to unsatisfied or conflicting dependencies. I tried repeatedly to do this installation, usually after some routine but plausibly relevant software update by the the USC.

A week or so ago, the install ran successfully. Sadly, it made no difference at all to the video problem.

If I find a solution here, I will report it.

Posted 02-02-2013 at 11:53 AM by flshope flshope is offline