How do I install the flash rpm from adobe?

I'm running PC BSD and overall I have a good impression of this operating system. This is the first time I ran UNIX. Normally, I just use Linux (Fedora 8 or Mepis). When I go to adobe to get flash it says that my platform is not supported. I can't make it go to the page where I can download the fedora rpm file to try it and see if it works. Is there an alternate source?

Also, I realize that running as root is not a good idea. I do want the option of using KDE to run root if I have to do so in the future. How do I enable root to use a desktop and not just a terminal? This has really saved my bacon in the past. Normally, I never run as root. It gives me a message that says that graphical login for root is not allowed.

Where is the software installer, not just the updater? Suppose I want to search for something to install such as, say, filezilla or real player. Where is the add software program? With Fedora or Mepis this is no problem. Mepis uses Synaptic.

Still, the default options seem to be fine for most situations.

There is no flash for *BSD. If you set up the ports---I'm not sure in PCBSD, may be portsnap---you need linux binary compatability. Then you can use linux-firefox and get flash to work there. The FreeBSD handbook might help. A lot of it applies to PCBSD.

FreeBSD has great documentation. One of it's many strong points.

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO...ook/index.html
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO...ook/ports.html
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO...dbook/x11.html

Also here
http://www.daemonforums.org/

As far as flash goes, the powers that be have decided not to support FreeBSD or Linux that well.

Some use Gnash, some use linux-firefox with flash7, some run windows firefox under wine.

http://www.daemonforums.org/showthread.php?t=2225

But, how do I allow root to login graphically? It is a lot easier to test this stuff if you can use a normal KDE desktop.

Of course, it is also good to know how to disable it again later if I change my mind... or am leaving town for a few weeks without my computer.

But, how do I allow root to login graphically?
You don't. Real bad idea. If you use KDE then use KDESU to run an app as user with root privileges using users password. Or configure sudoers file and use sudo in a shell. You'll have a log record of what user did what. I think there is a change listed in the handbook that will allow root logins. I think you have to make a change in KDM's config. If you are going to do that though you might as well go back to windows. Not a good idea to be logging in as root. Use sudo. Open a browser as root and the internet has full access to your box just like a microsoft box.

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?q...EASE+and+Ports
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?q...EASE+and+Ports
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?q...EASE+and+Ports

This is sound advice.

This is just hyperbole and is probably not terribly helpful.

mdlinuxwolf: I've not used PC-BSD but I assume since it uses KDE it also uses KDM as the login manager. Check out the online docs to change the configuration. I believe the "AllowRootLogin" option may be what you're looking for.

Still, it would be most beneficial for you in the long run to use sudo or kdesu as teckk suggested. Not only is an audit log kept, but the fact that sudo will prompt for your password when you run a command as root (in the safer default configuration) will force you to at least pause and hopefully consider before you run something as root.

Hope this helps.

Fedora, SuSE, Mepis Puppy Mandriva and Mandrake all allow for root to login graphically. Is there some difference with BSD that prohibits root from operating safely that Linux has fixed? Obviously this is just for configuration only and never for routine use.

Sometimes configuration files are modified from the original "upstream" versions for convenience, safety, or to support a point of view of the OS. For example, I discovered yesterday that the default configuration for Tomcat 5.5 in Ubuntu doesn't allow servlets to open sockets whereas in OpenBSD no such restriction has been made. More than likely the PC-BSD team simply thinks it is a best practice to not login to X11 as root (which indeed it is, in my opinion) so they changed the default configuration to discourage it.

I got it to work and now I can watch youtube and daily motion without a problem. The player seems to be just slightly more sluggish then it does when I ran it with Linux. I placed the flash installer which is originally known as install_flash_player_9_linux.tar.gz into my Downloads folder. I was lucky enough to have backed it up to my NAS drive after getting it to work with Mepis. I then extracted it there to get install_flash_player_9_linux. I renamed it flash-install.bin. I right clicked on it and made it executable.

After that, I used the "Run command" which is in the start menu to run Konqueror as root. I copied the file into /compat/linux/bin. When I ran the file from the terminal running as root, I got a warning saying that I needed glibc because it was too old. I went online and found glibc-2.7.tar and extracted it into /compat/linux/bin.

Then I ran flash-install.bin again, this time while running Konqueror as root by clicking on it. I got a window asking if I was sure that I wanted to run the executable file. I said yes. It worked.

The moral of this story is that if you have a Linux binary and you want to run it under PC BSD, put the binary into /compat/linux/bin, not /bin.

Now if I can only get Filezilla to work....

Its now a PBI & it works.

There was this:

http://www.ixsystems.com/news/pc-bsd...e-systems.html

And when I listened to a BSDTalk from BSDCan I thought I heard one of the iXSystems guys say something about Flash 9 support coming soon. For FileZilla see:

http://www.pbidir.com/bt/pbi/12/filezilla

Well that is good news at any rate. Overall, BSD seems to be pretty solid. Some of the multimedia support is better then Linux. For example, mplayer had no problems with flash files, avi or wmv files. I could flawlessly play the files that I downloaded without any additional effort on my part, but couldn't watch them on the web until the flash worked.

Some of the pbi files such as Skype install normally when I try to get them from http://www.pbidir.com. Others simply just download and hang.