Mandriva 2010 KDE x64

anybody know how to install a flash player on this distro?

(can't seem to get any response on their forum)

I've never seen any distro supply Flash directly. Normally you get it from http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ and follow the instructions (fairly simple). If you haven't done that already, go do it now.

If Flash still doesn't run, and the browser acts as if it wasn't installed, well, I've been there. The install procedure didn't work for me several times, but then I discovered that the .so file for flash, named libflashplayer.so, had to be copied to (or make a symlink) /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/ (Be not distracted by any apparently more relevant directories such as /usr/lib/firefox-3.5/) The .so file could just as well go in your home directory under ~/.mozilla/plugins/ but then it's user-specific.

With the one libflashplayer.so installed somewhere, you can create symlinks in other places as needed, e.g. /usr/local/lib/opera/plugins/

I WAS hoping there was no non-root-user writeable place that Flash would run from. When my nephews use my laptop to access the net, I don't want them borging my browser with Flash. When they ask me how to run Flash on it, I just tell them to install it themselves. But I don't give them root access. Hopefully they will never see this thread and discover that putting it in ~/.mozilla/plugins/ makes it work. OTOH, at least that won't borg MY use of Firefox. But then I'll have to worry about what they are getting into on the net.

My next task: figure out how to concurrently run Firefox with Flash and without Flash at the same time.