Lazy install of flash player on Firefox and Chrome on Debian

To install the plugin we download it from Adobe and place it on our downloads folder. We will use the .tar.gz file format.

The file contains this structure:

$ tar -xvzf install_flash_player_11_linux_x86_64.tar.gz
libflashplayer.so
readme.txt
usr/
usr/bin/
usr/bin/flash-player-properties
usr/share/
usr/share/pixmaps/
usr/share/pixmaps/flash-player-properties.png
usr/share/kde4/
usr/share/kde4/services/
usr/share/kde4/services/kcm_adobe_flash_player.desktop
usr/share/applications/
usr/share/applications/flash-player-properties.desktop
usr/share/icons/
usr/share/icons/hicolor/
usr/share/icons/hicolor/32x32/
usr/share/icons/hicolor/32x32/apps/
usr/share/icons/hicolor/32x32/apps/flash-player-properties.png
usr/share/icons/hicolor/22x22/
usr/share/icons/hicolor/22x22/apps/
usr/share/icons/hicolor/22x22/apps/flash-player-properties.png
usr/share/icons/hicolor/24x24/
usr/share/icons/hicolor/24x24/apps/
usr/share/icons/hicolor/24x24/apps/flash-player-properties.png
usr/share/icons/hicolor/16x16/
usr/share/icons/hicolor/16x16/apps/
usr/share/icons/hicolor/16x16/apps/flash-player-properties.png
usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/
usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/
usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/flash-player-properties.png
usr/lib/
usr/lib/kde4/
usr/lib/kde4/kcm_adobe_flash_player.so
usr/lib64/
usr/lib64/kde4/
usr/lib64/kde4/kcm_adobe_flash_player.so

As root, we will excecute this command to install the files:

root# tar -xvzf install_flash_player_11_linux_x86_64.tar.gz -C /

The plugins must be located at /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins, we will check first if there's an old plugin to deactivate:

 /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins# ls -l
total 76
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root    69 Sep 25 12:42 ./
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root    37 Mar 18  2012 ../
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root    34 Sep 25 12:42 flash-mozilla.so -> /etc/alternatives/flash-mozilla.so
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root    37 Apr  9  2012 libnpjp2.so -> /usr/local/java/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 75448 May 17  2011 skypebuttons.so


There's the bundled flash enabled... we will remove the symlink to disable it.

/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins# rm flash-mozilla.so
rm: remove symbolic link `flash-mozilla.so'? y


Then we copy over the plugin and delete trash from the installation:

/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins# mv /libflashplayer.so .
/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins# rm /readme.txt

And we confirm the permissions will allow our user to read the plugin:

 -rw-rw-r-- 1  501  501 19223376 Sep 29 12:13 libflashplayer.so

Now we can go to youtube.com and check out the latest videos to test our plugin.

Note: You might want to disable the PepperFlash version of Chrome and use only the one from adobe, here's how: