Ubuntucat

Some people have found the new version of Adobe’s Flash player to offer greater stability (fewer crashes) in the Ubuntu version of Firefox. Others just like to try cutting edge software. Either way, this is how you install Flash 10 beta in Ubuntu.

Probably the easiest way to do it is to download the .deb file of it from your local mirror and then double-click it.

If you prefer to install the .tar.gz from the Adobe website, copy and paste the following commands into the terminal:

This command uninstalls the Ubuntu repositories version of Flash 9.

This downloads the Flash 10 beta compressed file.

This extracts the files contained in the compressed file.

This command copies the Flash plugin to the Firefox plugins folder.

This command removes the extracted files folder.

This command removes the originally downloaded compressed file.

Below is what the whole process looks like:

username@ubuntu:~$ sudo apt-get remove flashplugin-nonfree

Reading package lists… Done

Building dependency tree

Reading state information… Done

The following packages will be REMOVED:

flashplugin-nonfree

0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

Need to get 0B of archives.

After unpacking 160kB disk space will be freed.

Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Y

(Reading database … 68660 files and directories currently installed.)

Removing flashplugin-nonfree …

username@ubuntu:~$ wget -c http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplayer10/flashplayer10_install_linux_081108.tar.gz

–18:23:37– http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplayer10/flashplayer10_install_linux_081108.tar.gz

=> `flashplayer10_install_linux_081108.tar.gz’

Resolving download.macromedia.com… 72.246.87.191

Connecting to download.macromedia.com|72.246.87.191|:80… connected.

HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 200 OK

Length: 4,035,433 (3.8M) [application/x-gzip]

100%
[=====================================================
===================================>]
4,035,433 624.95K/s ETA 00:00

18:23:44 (620.39 KB/s) – `flashplayer10_install_linux_081108.tar.gz’ saved
[4035433/4035433]

username@ubuntu:~$ tar -xvzf flashplayer10_install_linux_081108.tar.gz

install_flash_player_10_linux/

install_flash_player_10_linux/libflashplayer.so

install_flash_player_10_linux/flashplayer-installer

username@ubuntu:~$ sudo cp install_flash_player_10_linux/libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/xulrunner-addons/plugins/

username@ubuntu:~$ rm -r install_flash_player_10_linux

rm: remove write-protected regular file `install_flash_player_10_linux/flashplayer-installer’? Y

username@ubuntu:~$ rm flashplayer10_install_linux_081108.tar.gz

If you run into problems, post a support thread at the Ubuntu Forums.

Like Mac OS X, Ubuntu includes by default a privilege escalation system that invokes sudo, which allows certain users (in the admin group) to operate as limited-privileged users for almost all tasks and to temporarily escalate (after a password authentication) to administrative privileges for specific tasks. For more details about sudo, check out the Ubuntu Wiki page on the subject.

Sometimes users want to modify system files and thus need “root” (or full administrative) privileges to make changes to those files. This tutorial will show you how to create an application launcher to “browse as root.”

Right-click on an empty spot on the panel and select Add to Panel

Select Custom Application Launcher and then click Add

The type should be Application and the command should be

The rest of the fields and the icon can be whatever you want them to be.

When you’re done filling in the fields and (optionally) selecting an icon for the launcher, click OK

Now when you click the launcher icon, you’ll be prompted for a password…

and you can browse as root and make changes to system files, all within your otherwise-unprivileged user session.

Ubuntu uses a graphical interface called Gnome (sometimes you may hear it referred to as a desktop environment), which allows you to easily define keyboard shortcuts for some common commands by going to System > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts.

Sometimes, though, you may want to define keyboard shortcuts for custom commands that aren’t available through that menu. In this example, you’ll see how to make a keyboard shortcut for a command that will allow you to open a file browser as “root” (or the ultimate administrative user).

First, press Alt-F2. This will open a Run Application dialogue.

In that dialogue, paste the command

In the Configuration Editor window that appears, click on the menu Apps and then select Metacity. Within Metacity, you’ll see several submenus. The first one you’ll select will be global_keybindings. Once you select that, you’ll see a bunch of disabled commands with numbers attached to them. Find an empty one, most probably run_command_1, click on the Value column next to it, and then type the keyboard shortcut.

You’ll have to actually type out the words describing the shortcut. You can’t, as you would in the normal Keyboard Shortcut menu, just press the key combination you want. In this case, the shortcut

means Windows+N (or holding down the Windows key and then pressing the n key).

This assumes you’ve already made Windows a modifier key. If you haven’t yet completed that step, you can use other modifier keys like <Shift> or <Alt>

Then, again within the submenu of Metacity, select keybinding_commands, pick the corresponding empty command (since we selected run_command_1 before, we should now select command_1). For the command, we’re putting

Now when you press Windows+N, you’ll get a password authentication dialogue to escalate to root privileges temporarily…

And then you can browse and make changes to the filesystem as root.

In my experience, by default Ubuntu seems to make the Windows key on keyboards a single key for the purposes of keyboard shortcuts. In other words, if you want to set a keyboard shortcut for an action to be Windows+D (for example, to have the desktop shown and all windows minimized when you hold down the Windows key and press the D key), Ubuntu will interpret this to mean you want the keyboard shortcut to be the Windows key itself (D doesn’t even enter into the picture).

So if you’re a Ubuntu user like me—you love keyboard shortcuts and don’t want the Windows key as a modifier key to go to waste—this simple tutorial should make you happy.

First, go to System > Preferences > Keyboard

Then, under the Layouts tab, select Layout Options

Under Alt/Win key behavior, select Super is mapped to the Win-keys. And then click Close.

You should now be able to go to System > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts and use combinations of keys with the Windows key for keyboard shortcuts.

Overcorrection.

It’s a natural human inclination. If you throw me a heavy ball I catch in my right hand and then throw me a heavy ball I catch in my left hand, I will lean right, lean left, and then balance myself to the middle eventually.

There was a time (I want to say it was the early 1980s) when everyone I knew said so-and-so and me regardless of whether it was appropriate for the sentence or not: Jill and me went to the comic book convention on Saturday or Bill and me lost our virginity on the doorstep of my parents’ house. Then I guess some hoity-toity wanna-be grammarians kept chastising others with “No, it’s so-and-so and I,” and eventually, instead of learning that it depends on the structure of the sentence, people learned that it was always so-and-so and I instead of so-and-so and me. Now, twenty years later, almost every college graduate I know who is between the ages of 22 and 35 will say so-and-so and I even if the sentence warrants a so-and-so and me.

Here’s a quick lesson for those who don’t want to burn my ears. So-and-so and I is just a more specific way of saying we. So-and-so and me is just a more specific way of saying us. So substitute in we or us as necessary and see if the sentence sounds funny to you.

Examples
That was just a secret between Michelle and I
Lawn bowling is something Gertrude and I enjoy doing every Saturday
Hester gave a thoughtful gift to Edith and I
Grace and I wanted to play bridge but couldn’t find the cards

Okay. Let’s substitute in we or us and see how the sentences sound now.

That was just a secret between we (wrong)
Lawn bowling is something we enjoy doing every Saturday (right)
Hester gave a thoughtful gift to we (wrong)
We wanted to play bridge but couldn’t find the cards (right).

Some people also recommend removing the so-and-so to see how ridiculous the sentence sounds (e.g., That was just a secret between I or That was just a secret between me), but that doesn’t preserve the meaning of the sentence, so I prefer substituting in we and us instead.

It’s not that complicated, really. So-and-so and I is the same as we, and so-and-so and me is the same as us. If you can keep we and us straight, you should know when to use I and me appropriately with a so-and-so.