I recently purchased a new laptop and installed Slackware64 13.1, it works fine, but I have no Flash in my browsers. I had downloaded and installed Google Chrome, took some work, but got it working, only no Flash support. Believing this to be a problem with Chrome, I tried in FireFox, and again, no Flash support. I downloaded Opera, the same, Konqueror, ditto. I downloaded the latest Flash, (Just the libflashplayer.so in the package, isn't that a little weird?) and put it in /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins and tried Firefox again, no luck. I downloaded the latest version, installed it, but it keeps saying "firefox-bin: no such file or directory" even though it is clearly there. There is something not quite right here, and I can't seem to figure it out. Any help would be appreciated.

For Firefox and related browsers, copy or symlink libflashplayer.so to ~/.mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so.

For Opera, check the Opera website for Opera plugins.

Okay, I did that, but still no luck. When I looked at "about:plugins" in FireFox, it didn't have it listed, neither did Chrome. I checked the permissions of the link , it has read, write and execute, size of target is 12M but the permissions for the target were -rwxr-xr-x. I thought this might have something to do with it, so I changed it to universal rwx and just for the heck of it ran "ldconfig" but still nothing. This is most perplexing.

Adobe flash and a 64-bit kernel is a no no at the moment.

See here http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06...or_linux_dead/

Well, at least now I know. That sucks :-/ So I guess there's no way of running Flash in my browsers? What about 32-bit compatibility libraries or a slightly older version? Or am I just SOL for now?

Do you really need a 64-bit kernel? Unless you are running some massive database or something, you probably don't, and wouldn't notice if you switched back to a 32-bit kernel.

Maybe try it. Do you notice any difference in performance?

Or perhaps you should look at gnash ?

I'm using an Athlon 64 X2 processor, which is why I'm using 64-bit Slackware, perhaps I'm under the misconception that a 64-bit CPU needs a 64-bit OS? If this isn't the case, and performance isn't really hampered, then I would use 32-bit Slackware, sure. You'll have to forgive me, I've been out of the computing loop for awhile. As for usage, I got this laptop for school, mostly web access, music management, that kind of thing, but I'm also learning computer programming (school) and PC Support and administration (school). I'm not really doing any databasing, at least not yet. I've been using Linux for a long time, and I can't bring myself to use Windows on my own computer. I know how to use it and maintain it, but I just don't like it. And I don't like the idea of it being on MY computer, you know what I mean? So I guess 32-bit Linux is an option even though I'm using an AMD64 CPU?

Yes.
It'll work fine for what you need. Might even be faster than the 64-bit version.

When I was talking about big databases, I meant terrabyte / exabyte sizes. This is NOT going to apply to you (but you get all sorts here on LQ!).

You might be able to get away with just replacing your 64-bit kernel with a 32-bit one, and leaving everything else alone (IE not a "complete backup, reinstall, restore" ).

Install a 32-bit kernel, boot it, does any / everything work?

I haven't used slack, but there's no harm in trying. Maybe post on the slack LQ forum along the lines of "Currently 64-bit, now want a 32-bit kernel" if you'd like authoritative advice before you start.

Good luck.

I'll give it a try. Couldn't hurt. Thank you so much for your help! I'll let you know how it turned out.

Good.

Please remember to let us know how you get on.

"Feedback" is the only sort of "payment" we get here on LQ, and it is important as it helps us help others: "That worked" or "That didn't work because .....".

Just add a quick post to this thread (bookmark it).

I wish more people would try the sbopkg build and package manager
http://www.sbopkg.org/ it is simple it works and it is kept updated.
if you have a full install and you install the plugin it will work.

Hmmm. Yes, perhaps, but have you read this entire thread carefully?

Adobe have dropped support for flash on 64-bit kernels. See the posts above.

Have I misunderstanding something? I am not a slackware user, but look forward to your reply.

I'm running Flash just fine with 64-bit Lucid (and 64-bit openSUSE 11.3), so maybe a complete architecture change is not necessarily in order. I needed a shell script to get it working, but it did work.

Oh yes the flash is being re-written old news very old news so use the last stable one that was written. it runs great in current if you are freaked out with security do not run it as root.
Flash will revamp and come out with a completely rebuilt system even for 32 bit.
but hey they have to.go to labs it is not drop just a complete redesign. Competition and compression formats. http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/f...r10/64bit.html