How do I capture online-streaming video's via OpenSuSE 11.4?
 

At one time I was able to download video's via IE 8 and a plugin from RealPlayer...the plugin only worked with IE not FireFox...since I crashed my XP install and had to go to all linux I havent been able to find the same for Chrome browser...my Firefox install will not even play vidoes (think I have a Flash issue) so I'm stuck using Chrome for YouTube and other video's...is there a program that I have or can install that will capture online video's ??

I might be able to give you some ideas about some of the underlying issues you are having. I realize this won't handle all your issues, but hopefully some of this will help you solve some of your issues.

re - "had to go to all linux":

If the XP install was legit, AFAIK, there usually ought to be some way to re-install it. Even with MS-Windows media that comes with some restriction phrased somewhat similarly to "For use with a New PC", someone is supposed to be Licensed for that instance of Windows, whether the end User or the PC "Manufacturer". At one point I bought an Acer PC with Windows pre-installed, and although I ostensibly wasn't allowed to have the usual Windows install media, Acer provided so called Resource/Recovery media, with which I could restore the machine to its original state, with all the pre-installed software, including Windows, that the machine originally had at the time I bought the machine. HP tends to accomplish the same thing, with a "RECOVERY" partition on the hard drive. As I understand it, with some PC manufacturers, sometimes you don't get any of that sort of thing up front, you have to contact the manufacturer and ask for it, OR, ask them to reinstall the pre-loaded software, including Windows.


re - "Firefox install will not even play vidoes":

I'm also still using openSUSE 11.4. When I first starting doing "Flash" programming, I was driving myself crazy with what I thought was some so-called-"sandbox" or security issue, preventing me from playing videos on Firefox. Then I discovered that, really, it was only certain "formats" of videos that wouldn't play. I'm not sure it's the cause of the issue, but my understanding is that Adobe wants to drop support for "older" formats, and I suspect that's cause of the issue, as what seem to be considered the newer formats, play just fine with Flash within Firefox. I tend to use mostly Firefox, but when I finally tried the Chrome browser, the videos that didn't play on Firefox, seemingly "just played" on Chrome. I don't believe I even installed any special plug-ins. That doesn't mean that Chrome doesn't have some plug-ins. It may that be that SUSE just provided them with the install of Chrome, OR, Chrome may just be able to use whatever plug-ins have been made generally available, those that are not just installed "privately" for Firefox, OR both. I've included the list of plug-ins that the Chrome I have installed finds. I was hoping the list would be more readable than it turned out to be, when included between CODE tags. Instead there's all sorts of unfortunate "wrapping" of the longer lines. But hopefully it will still be of some help to you. I have Chrome 18.0.1025.142 installed. Placing:

in the "location bar/box", this is conceptually what chrome shows me:

rigor...thanks for your reply-help
 

XP - At one time I used to know how to reinstall "just" windows (with effecting programs-updates installed) but after many years I cant remember how I did it before (OEM disk)...I will not do a fresh install (with all the thousands of updates - no way)...if you could help me with that I'd appreciate it...note..I have a dual-boot Linux-XP...when I choose XP, chkdsk runs (takes an hr) and with any luck I "might" be able to sign in successfully...but as soon as I shutdown and try a cold boot chkdsk wants to run again...Seems like Im caught in an endless loop...clicking from my 80gb hd (xp) can be heard on reboot or cold boot...the drive is as old as XP so probably failing ??

Linux-OpenSuSE 11.4 - if my mind is correct, my problems started when I upgraded FireFox via YAST...Im using FF ver 16.0.2-45.1 and Java 1.6.0.0_b24.1.11 Flash ver 11.2.202.243_23.1 What you said about phasing out older version of Flash (& Java versions) has crossed my mind several times. So when I upgraded I killed my Firefox ability to view video's (ie...YouTube)

Only choice I seemed to have is to stick with 11.4-Chrome for as long as I can...maybe its time for a MAC :)

Thanks again for your input-thoughts

Maybe some Windows expert can tell you how to reinstall just windows without doing it from scratch. About all I know of, are a few things with which I've had limited success:

1) If you have the right install media, there's sometimes a mode on the install media, with a name something like "repair", which can sometimes be used to fix the existing installation.

2) If, very early in the Windows boot procedure you press a special key, which I believe is usually the F8 key, you can access "safe" mode, and various other special modes. Some of these modes don't load various "higher level"/more-automatic windows facilities, and so keep things simple for trying to determine what's wrong with an existing installed system.

3) Running the msconfig utility from the startup menu, allows various degrees of selectivity about what's started when Windows boots. You can choose to run the system with most things disabled, while you're trying to figure out what's wrong.

4) When the system seems to be running properly, I manually create system restore points, from time to time, so I have a system state that I expect to be sane, to go back to, if I encounter problems later.

It does sound as if you may have some issue with your disk, or something related. If the system is shut down properly each time, you might want to run chkdsk yourself from a command prompt to see, in detail, what chkdsk's complaints are. Booting from the install media, and using the repair mode ( or whatever it's called ) can be helpful if you suspect your hard drive, since then you're not dependent on the hard drive to run the system you've booted. I've sometimes seen some strange problem with the swap/page file cause issues. When I deleted the file and recreated it, the problem was fixed. Since you don't want to re-install, even if your drive could be helped by a low-level format, naturally it's not likely to fix the problem, since after a low level format, you'd then usually need to re-install. But if you do have some bad blocks, too many to be replaced using the replacement table, if they are in a "good" spot, perhaps toward the end of a partition, you might be able to use a disk utility to "shrink" the live partition, to avoid the blocks.

But if possible, the first thing you might want to do is boot from the install media, run chkdsk on the hard drive, to see what the complaints are.

That would be the very last update before 11.4 went "End Of Life" on "November 5th 2012"
SEE: lifetime
http://en.opensuse.org/Lifetime

for the unsupported 11.4
see the firefox extentions for 11.4
http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_Firefox_extension
http://software.opensuse.org/package...nding-openSUSE
you will have to click on the "show unsupported versions " for 11.4 to be shown

or use yast

but the state of the mirrors for 11.4 is anyone's guess

cbjhawks,

There's the fully "Official" Firefox from the openSUSE standard repositories, and then there's the Firefox from Mozilla's OBS ( openSUSE Build Service ) repository. The Mozilla OBS still appears to be viable ( a test is to see if you can refresh the repository content listing, which I can, and also to look at how recently things have been built ).

AFAIK, mainly the "Official" version gets you the openSUSE "branding". Also, at some point there is a bit of ( in my case ) KDE "integration". But you do have alternatives. The most recent Mozilla OBS build was Feb 19, 2013. That's for the "Standard" Firefox. There's also a "Standalone" Firefox known as Firefox-esr available through the OBS. Then too, I've had some luck just downloading direct from Mozilla and installing an unmodified Firefox.

As a last resort, if you are in a position to try a newer version of openSUSE, you could try upgrading. Unless the bugs from the earliest release of 12.1 have been fixed ( including some I reported during testing, but which I believe hadn't been fixed by the time of first release ), I'd stay away from openSUSE 12.1, but 12.2 is available. Or if you wait 15 days, 12.3 is supposed to be available. I'm not running 12.2 because I believe it defaults to GRUB-2, and I know my brain isn't fully GRUB-2 compatible yet. I've done a lot with GRUB-1/Legacy-GRUB, but not GRUB-2. I have a slew of OS's installed, so I'm in a situation where I need GRUB-2 to boot from an extended partition, which it can supposedly do, but it doesn't seem to want to do so, in my case. I'm not sure if dropping back to GRUB-1 is an option. But depending on your situation, you might try 12.2 or 12.3, if any of the newer Firefox versions which might work on openSUSE 11.4, don't fix your problem.

Hope this helps!

12.2 fixed the dolphin crash issues

I have had a lot less problems that with 12.1

but with 11.4 there will be problems installing programs , seeing as it is unsupported


but you can always download FF19 from mozilla
install it to a non std location
say --- /usr/opt/firefox
export the the path to "/usr/opt/firefox/firefox"
then uninstall the old ff from suse
( take EXTREME !!! care not to uninstall 1/2 of the operating system )

as of firefox 13 it auto installs the updates by default ( unless you turn that off )

Since 11.4 has reached end of life, is it expected that there will be no future updates provided by the openSUSE organization itself. That's not the same as saying that 11.4 has become broken or non-functional, nor that the community repositories on the OBS are not available.

YAST2 tells me that the required RPM's for Firefox 19 are available, as long as I allow various components to be taken from the OBS.