nVidia restricted driver vs. flash vs. Firefox vs. me
 

So my new Dell Studio XPS 8000 (i7-860, 8 GB ram, nVidia GeForce GT220 i GB video) is up and running Ubuntu 9.10 64 bit. Except I have issues with flash content in Firefox. I have installed the flash plugin non-free but the issues persist.

Examples include the inability to play embedded video and lack of response of flash content. If you look at the site below (local TV station web site) and click on the image for a particular day of the week, the weather forecast should scroll to that day. It does not.

www.wral.com/weather

I have created a VMWare virtual machine running Ubuntu 9.10 64 bit and run it on the same hardware as a guest. Firefox works fine including playing embedded video and the weather forecast page works fine.

If I remove the restricted nVidia driver - the screen gets messed up and I loose my second monitor. However, Firefox works correctly with flash content.

Any suggestions as to where I go from here?

Thanks,

Ken

I doubt that this has anything to do with the video card. I tried the site and got the same behavior:
1. clicking on a date does nothing (although there is click feedback, so the code obviously sees the click)
2. the small scroll bar below the dates does not respond correctly (scrolls only when grabbing and dragging the box)

I strongly suspect that the site is at fault. I've have reported several websites for flash problems with FF.

I would call the station and report what you are seeing. When they say that they don't support Firefox, you can (politely) point out that FF is used bye ~20-30% of Internet users. (Pretty large group to be ignoring)

Meanwhile, let's get some other member reports on the site.

"Hope" in a better new version of the restricted nVidia driver so you can avoid to lost the second monitor.

I think that probably when you use vmware that Ubuntu work without using the restricted nVidia driver, so work fine.

Unfortunately only using the restricted version you could have all the functionality of your graphics but you have at the same time the bug and the malfunction typically from closed source software.

However you could even tried alternative from Firefox when you want see video or using flash as for example google chromium.

Flash is a real pain (another proprietary software with closed source) but at least using chromium if you have problem you have blocked only the task and don't all the browser (seem that functionality will be available even in Firefox but in future ... perhpas when will be realized firefox 4).

Thanks pixellany but it does not appear to be a Firefox vs. the web site issue. The page works correctly with:

Firefox on XP on an older PC,
Firefox on an XP VM on the new PC,
Firefox on an Ubuntu 9.10 64 bit VM on the new PC,
Firefox on Ubuntu 8.04 on the old PC,
Firefox on an Windows 7 64 bit VM on the new PC,
and Firefox on Ubuntu 9.10 64 bit on the new PC with the restricted drivers removed.

Thanks AleLinuxBSD - I did try Epiphany but it does not seem to support flash content. I guess will keep an eye out for new drivers from nVidia.

Ken