Since I am new to these boards I guess I should give some background on myself. I'm fairly experienced with computer hardware and Windows. My background with Windows goes all the way back as a little kid with 386's and terrible operating systems with names like 3.1 which I felt were terrible (that and had more fun playing with DOS). While I am not a hardcore hacker by any means, I have built most of my desktops (some of which did not want to go together well at all). I have also fiddled with the registry, and also had some fun playing with different shells for windows. So while I'm not claiming to be an expert, I'm not afraid to try some out of the ordinary things.

My experience with linux is not nearly as broad. After I built my last desktop and had no real use for my old IBM T40 laptop (about 5 years old now), I've gone through and set up various linux distros throughout the years, beginning to get a feel for linux. I started with a live cd of Knoppix, moved to Mandrake, tried setting up Gentoo (which I'm sure a bunch of you would have had a good laugh over), and then took a break for a while. Eventually I wanted to try to get my laptop up and functional again if anything else as a nice quality secondary computer for basic functions. This led me to installing Ubuntu which worked well for quite a while and I had quite a few programs set up properly. However, once doing some research and actual usage I decided to shy away from it largely because of Gnome. This led me to Kubuntu and I am very much enjoying the KDE (3.5) environment.

The problem I'm having currently tho is with Konqueror when browsing various websites. I've installed flash with no difficulties at all, and most websites are rendering great, the problems I'm having is with some of the media content on some websites, specifically youtube. When I try to view something on youtube the video window will be completely gray, including the controls for the video, and that will not change; however the audio from the video will play at the same time with no problems. Another issue is with the flash (/fancy graphic) version of gmail. I can login to my account and it starts to load fully, but when the loading bar finally fills up, Konqueror just kinda stops and the only way I can get any email read/sent is by switching over to the basic html version of the site. While this isn't a major issue of course, it is annoying as I have gotten accustomed to the fancy flash interface and I would like to at least have the option available.

When I had Ubuntu set up and was using it for a couple months my browser of choice was firefox and it worked pretty much perfectly, including sites like youtube. When I switched over to Kubuntu recently I've started using Konqueror and I like it quite a bit. Now I realize I could easily just install Firefox, set that up, and I'd likely have zero problems at all, however I like the idea of getting things set up properly without always taking the easy way out.

So anyways, long intro and background aside, my main question boils down to this. Besides flash, am I missing a major install or configuration that I need to set up in order to get Konqueror to run websites (primarily youtube but also gmail) properly?

Or could I also be hoping for too much as the problem might be that Konqueror really isn't that good compared to the more popular browsers available today and I should just give in and start setting up firefox?

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=638132
... compare what you have done carefully with others working configurations.

Test your flash plugin at:
http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/welcome/
... you should see the animation.

Illuminating thread:
http://www.kubuntuforums.net/forums/...?topic=3094946

Note: Flash and GNU/Linux don't really mix too well. As well as being a possible malware vector, flash is non-free software... which is to say that macromedia do not think that computers users deserve freedom.

My attitude to sites which require flash is, well stuff them. What do you have that should make we want to have a security risk, so that I can see your site as you wanted me to see it (and waste some of the bandwidth that I'm paying for, in the process)?

OTOH, I take a particular amusement at sites that have their main content in 'plain' html and advertisements in flash. Boy, has anyone who does that not got it.

Just because you have kubuntu, doesn't mean that you can't have firefox. Should be a simple matter for synaptic to get that for you. And you could have other browsers too (Opera, for example, isn't free, but is good), so, if you really must have flash, you could keep one browser set up for flash that you could keep for sites that need it, and use another browser for 'clean' sites.

What I don't like about konqueror as a web browser (and the implication is that I like pretty much everything else) is that the font rendering is sometimes a bit odd - away from the default - and that makes a lot of sites look a bit clunky. As a file browser though, konq is pretty spiffy.

Whether you like closed software or not is another topic, and an entirely separated one.

The important thing here is the the flash plugin is not of a very good quality. Period. Depending on the version of the plugin, the browser, the version of the browser and -if in amd64- the version of nspluginwrapper, the plugin might work correctly, partially or not at all. In that regard, konqueror is not the culprit at all. It might work with firefox or not, sometimes it will work with a given version of firefox but not on konqui, some other times it will be the other way around. There's really no rule of thumb.

The only advice I can give you is to try the latest beta of the plugin if you haven't yet. I personally stay as far from flash as I can. It's the perfect way to make your site inaccessible in any arch other than x86 and / or any OS other than windows.

I installed flash through adobe.com and it seems to be ok (crashes sometimes but there are precautions I'm used to taking from my days of dealing with temperamental Windows machines)
Iceweasel and Epiphany seem to work ok with flash installed.
It's easy to forget flash is not only used to make a good looking site without moving from the front page, it's used on major sites like youtube.com or radioblogclub.com
you can download videos from youtube through software or sites and view it in VLC but it's annoying.

Debian

Wow, thanks for all the responses guys.

Simon - I looked through your links and followed a lot of the walkthrus that were set up on there and from what I saw I have been and did everything correctly, alas Konqueror still refuses to comply

salasi - I agree very much with your beliefs of flash and how websites are made, most of my favorite websites are very much based on simple text and not overcomplicated flashy piles. I also think I may have confused you because I'm not under the belief that because I'm using KDE I can't have Firefox. I actually went out and got firefox 3.0 earlier today to see if the issue was with Konqueror somewhere, or if the issue was in my actual set-up somewhere. After a little fiddling Firefox was up and running perfectly and playing flash without issues. However while that is nice, I still would like to get Konqueror set up properly because, well it just feels wrong when something doesn't work as it's supposed to. I'm also familiar with using multiple different browsers, at one point when this laptop still had windows I had firefox, opera, slimbrowser, and also IE (for the occasional REALLY terribly made website) but even then, at least all of them worked for virtually everything and didn't have major issues, which is why this this issue is annoyingly frustrating.

i92guboj - I very much agree with you that the plugin is of very poor quality. So far hunting down betas for the plugins looks to be my best option.

loperz7 - I'm not familiar with Iceweasel or Epiphany so I'll go do some research, but the whole idea of having to d/l any video I wanna watch on youtube is a little much in my opinion as large part of the appeal of those websites is the fact you can just sit back and click thru watching short random videos that intrigue you.