Quoting Craig Sanders (cas@taz.net.au):

I gave up on flash / youtube / other videos in firefox/iceweasel ages ago. mostly because i don't want to enable all the scripting that video sites "require" on my main browser. recent versions of iceweasel in experimental have great support for HTML5 videos but I still don't want to watch videos in my primary browser.

instead, i installed Chromium, the open-source version of google chrome. this has an updated flash player built-in (newer than the stand-alone linux version which works with firefox). Watching youtube etc videos is pretty much the only thing i use Chromium for, so i'm not too worried about the tracking spyware.

I use the adblock and NotScripts plugins for chromium, so javascript is disabled on sites by default unless I turn it on.

BTW, i use yet another browser (Midori) for facebook, which (unfortunately) is the only way i can keep in touch with some friends....and, again, I never use that browser for anything else. Of course, I enable the adblock plugin for midori too.

The logic of this approach is compelling. Nothing like total process separation among multiple browsers for preventing cross-site tracking.

i also use epiphany (ugh!)....

As penance? You must have been very bad. ;-> Every five or so years, I look around to see what Linux graphical Web browsers exist, alongside Firefox[/Iceweasel] Chromium/Chrome, and Konqueror. My latest survey is comically out of date, and can be seen here: http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/?page=kicking#linuxbrowser Of those, I see these are still around: http://conkeror.org/ http://www.seamonkey-project.org/ (bloatware alert!) http://www.dillo.org/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/brx/ https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Web (ex-Epiphany, now called 'Web' - GNOME brain-damage alert!) http://www.w3.org/Amaya/ http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/ (FSF religion alert!) http://www.twotoasts.de/?/pages/midori_summary.html (but you have that one) https://code.google.com/p/arora/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazehakase http://www.netsurf-browser.org/ http://www.muhri.net/skipstone/ http://swiftweasel.tuxfamily.org/ (no releases for 5 years) https://rekonq.kde.org/ http://www.opera.com/computer (proprietary) http://getswiftfox.com (proprietary) ...just in case you wanted a dozen or more additional Linux graphical browsers to play with. -- Cheers, A Spanish todo list has everything. Rick Moen -- Matt Watson (@biorhythmist) rick@linuxmafia.com McQ! (4x80)

Quoting Robert Brown (rebrown@exemail.com.au):

There are a number of anti-tracking add-ons but in particular Ghostery is a good tool for revealing and turning off website trackers.

I do not personally add proprietary extensions to an open-source browser. (I find that Ghostery is also not a match for the combination of AdBlock Plus, NoScript with custom tuning, and BeefTaco. Also IMO, Ghostery is overengineered in addition to being proprietary. Views, of course, differ[tm].)

On 28.03.15 17:37, Craig Sanders wrote:

I gave up on flash / youtube / other videos in firefox/iceweasel ages ago. mostly because i don't want to enable all the scripting that video sites "require" on my main browser. recent versions of iceweasel in experimental have great support for HTML5 videos but I still don't want to watch videos in my primary browser.

Thanks, Craig. I think I'll try that since Chromium works on youtube, but barfs on a BBC clip. I followed your link, and did a "dpkg -i" on the latest Midori. (The forewarned dependency issues did not materialise) It won't play the BBC clip either. I'm beginning to doubt that any of the browsers can find my only copy of flashplayer: /usr/local/src/install_flash_player_9_linux/libflashplayer.so If this is what they're using, then we end up at libgnashplugin.so $ ls /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins flash-mozilla.so@ libgnome-shell-browser-plugin.so librhythmbox-itms-detection-plugin.so $ ll /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/flash-mozilla.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 34 Mar 19 23:14 /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/flash-mozilla.so -> /etc/alternatives/flash-mozilla.so $ ll /etc/alternatives/flash-mozilla.so lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 32 Mar 19 23:14 /etc/alternatives/flash-mozilla.so -> /usr/lib/gnash/libgnashplugin.so $ ll /usr/lib/gnash/libgnashplugin.so -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 296392 Jan 23 2014 /usr/lib/gnash/libgnashplugin.so Damn! I just did: # rm /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/flash-mozilla.so # ln -s /usr/local/src/install_flash_player_9_linux/libflashplayer.so \ /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/flash-mozilla.so and I still get "You need to install Flash Player to play this content."

instead, i installed Chromium, the open-source version of google chrome. this has an updated flash player built-in (newer than the stand-alone linux version which works with firefox). Watching youtube etc videos is pretty much the only thing i use Chromium for, so i'm not too worried about the tracking spyware.

I loaded the chromium .deb, and youtube works. Sadly, trying a clip on the BBC, I still get "You need to install Flash Player to play this content." And then we're back to no Debian .deb, the closest being ubuntu. Mind you, they also say there that Flash Player 11.2 is the last which will target linux. I wonder what we're to use after that.

I use the adblock and NotScripts plugins for chromium, so javascript is disabled on sites by default unless I turn it on.

BTW, i use yet another browser (Midori) for facebook, which (unfortunately) is the only way i can keep in touch with some friends....and, again, I never use that browser for anything else. Of course, I enable the adblock plugin for midori too.

I'll poke around with these a bit, and see if I can coax any of them to actually use the flashplayer that's on my system. Many thanks. Erik -- "I get them to go around the classroom pretending to be sheep and then I read them Psalm 23." ... Any kids opting out of scripture were required to waste their time. It is expressly forbidden for children doing non-scripture to learn anything useful - because that would disadvantage those children doing scripture. - http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-03/riminton-the-conflicted-ethics-teacher...

On Sat, Mar 28, 2015 at 08:21:41PM +1100, Craig Sanders wrote:

apt-get install chromium

i havent tried it on BBC but it might work :)

you might also want to try get_iplayer: http://www.infradead.org/get_iplayer/html/get_iplayer.html this will let you download BBC iplayer programs and play them with mplayer or whatever you like. i've never bothered with BBC iplayer so i have no idea if BBC implements geo-restrictions to make this a PITA or not. i deliberately am not going to mention bit torrent at all, not even a tiny little bit, because that might be naughty. craig -- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>

On 28.03.15 20:21, Craig Sanders wrote:

On Sat, Mar 28, 2015 at 08:04:15PM +1100, Erik Christiansen wrote:

...

Mind you, they also say there that Flash Player 11.2 is the last which will target linux. I wonder what we're to use after that.

the correct answer is "good riddance to bad rubbish" but if you really need a more recent flash, try chromium or maybe even chrome if you can tolerate google's extra spyware (and if you can tolerate flash, tolerating google should be easy).

That's what I did: apt-get install chromium And while it'll play a youtube clip, it too won't play a BBC clip, as described in my immediately prior post. Heck, Midori behaves the same.

...

I'll poke around with these a bit, and see if I can coax any of them to actually use the flashplayer that's on my system.

try chromium - as i said, it has a newer version of flash built-in than will ever be available on linux...as you've found, adobe wont be releasing new versions for linux any more.

it also supports html5.

apt-get install chromium

i havent tried it on BBC but it might work :)

That's what I did after your initial suggestion. (I'd never tried chromium or midori before.) It installed fine, runs fine, but on a BBC clip decides that the flash version is obsolete. CLONG! Was that a penny dropping? I'm on debian stable, so the flashplayer that came across with firefox is going to be ... ah, venerable, innit? I'll have a go at fetching flashplayer from unstable, and see what happens then. Thanks again. Erik P.S. Hope you're feeling better, not just lighter. -- If you're going through hell, keep going! - Winston Churchill

On 28/03/15 21:03, Erik Christiansen wrote:

I'm on debian stable, so the flashplayer that came across with firefox is going to be ... ah, venerable, innit?

The Adobe flash player is not directly in the repositories. The default Debian install doesn't have flash set up in the browser. The gnash plugin provides some useful flash functionality, but you can view youtube using html5 these days anyway. If you have installed the flashplugin-nonfree package from contrib, you will have ended up with Adobe's flash player (Netscape style plugin). However, the package itself does not contain the player; it is just a loader. So the version is whichever one Adobe supplies to the loader. The loader can in theory be rerun to get any upgrades, but that has become irrelevant, since Adobe are no longer upgrading for Linux (with the exception of Chrome). The last Linux version is 11.2. It is (incidentally) possible to extract the latest plugin from Chrome and use it in Chromium, but it doesn't work with Firefox. Glenn -- sks-keyservers.net 0x6d656d65

Why not strip out the entire need for a browser on Youtube and use Minitube or Youtube-dl, both are privacy respecting Free Software. Unless you want to wallow in that cesspit of the youtubes comment section. :D -- Sent from my GNU/Linux-Libre box. Run free. http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html Come Visit Free Software Australia - http://freesoftware.org.au/ jabjabs@fastmail.com.au On Fri, Mar 27, 2015, at 23:37, Craig Sanders wrote:

I gave up on flash / youtube / other videos in firefox/iceweasel ages ago. mostly because i don't want to enable all the scripting that video sites "require" on my main browser. recent versions of iceweasel in experimental have great support for HTML5 videos but I still don't want to watch videos in my primary browser.

instead, i installed Chromium, the open-source version of google chrome. this has an updated flash player built-in (newer than the stand-alone linux version which works with firefox). Watching youtube etc videos is pretty much the only thing i use Chromium for, so i'm not too worried about the tracking spyware.

I use the adblock and NotScripts plugins for chromium, so javascript is disabled on sites by default unless I turn it on.

BTW, i use yet another browser (Midori) for facebook, which (unfortunately) is the only way i can keep in touch with some friends....and, again, I never use that browser for anything else. Of course, I enable the adblock plugin for midori too.

i also use epiphany (ugh!), konqueror, and an ancient iceape for some other sites I visit occasionally (like my online banking) and want to keep isolated from everything else. epiphany used to be my facebook browser but gnome stuff has been getting crappier and crappier and hostile to non-gnome desktop environments over the last few years so I don't use it much any more.

craig

ps: the version of midori in debian (0.4.3+dfsg-0.2) is truly ancient, so I downloaded an updated version (0.5.8-1~precise~ppa1) from the midori web site:

http://www.twotoasts.de/index.php?/pages/midori_summary.html

this is much newer and nicer with many bugfixes and improvements. it also supports HTML5 video. highly recommended. Midori's become quite a decent web browser.

yes, that is an ubuntu-ish sounding version number but it is the debian package that i downloaded and installed. it installs and runs in debian sid with no problems.

$ dpkg -I midori_0.5.8-1_amd64_.deb [...] Package: midori Version: 0.5.8-1~precise~ppa1 Architecture: amd64 Maintainer: Ryan Niebur <ryan@debian.org> Installed-Size: 5180 Depends: libc6 (>= 2.4), libcairo2 (>= 1.2.4), libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 (>= 2.22.0), libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.31.8), libgtk2.0-0 (>= 2.24.0), libjavascriptcoregtk-1.0-0 (>= 1.5.1), libnotify4 (>= 0.7.0), libpango1.0-0 (>= 1.14.0), libsoup-gnome2.4-1 (>= 2.27.4), libsoup2.4-1 (>= 2.33.92), libsqlite3-0 (>= 3.5.9), libwebkitgtk-1.0-0 (>= 1.7.92), libx11-6, libxml2 (>= 2.7.4), libxss1, dbus-x11 Recommends: gnome-icon-theme Conflicts: libsoup2.4-1 (<< 2.25.2) Provides: www-browser Section: web Priority: optional Homepage: http://www.twotoasts.de/index.php?/pages/midori_summary.html Description: fast, lightweight graphical web browser Midori is a lightweight web browser based on WebKit. . Its features include: . * Full integration with GTK+2. * Fast rendering with WebKit. * Tabs, windows and session management. * Flexibly configurable Web Search. * User scripts and user styles support. * Straightforward bookmark management. * Customizable and extensible interface. * Support for extensions (written in C). * Custom context menu actions.

-- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>

BOFH excuse #268:

Neutrino overload on the nameserver _______________________________________________ luv-main mailing list luv-main@luv.asn.au http://lists.luv.asn.au/listinfo/luv-main

On Sat, 28 Mar 2015 11:55:53 AM Michael Verrenkamp wrote:

Why not strip out the entire need for a browser on Youtube and use Minitube or Youtube-dl, both are privacy respecting Free Software.

Youtube-dl doesn't always work and when it does work it doesn't always work for all videos. I often watch youtube videos on Android devices. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

On Sat, 28 Mar 2015 at 17:38 Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au> wrote:

I gave up on flash / youtube / other videos in firefox/iceweasel ages ago.

My understanding is that Youtube will now use the HTML5 player by default on a recent browser. So flash isn't required any more here.

On 30/03/15 10:29, Trent W. Buck wrote:

Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au> writes: To the best of my knowledge:

1. Adobe does not maintain Adobe Flash on Linux. AT ALL. That means no security updates. hi

Adobe partly maintains Flash on Linux, fixes are released regularly for version 11 in 32bit (.tar.gz .rpm and YUM and APT supported (and 64 bit compatibility)). The MS-WIN version is upto 17? and there is a March 2015 release of the Linux. I usually leave Flash as "Ask to activate" as default

On Mon, 30 Mar 2015 at 10:03 Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au> wrote:

On Sun, Mar 29, 2015 at 10:24:13PM +0000, Brian May wrote:

...

I would recommend downloading the latest Chrome (which also comes with latest Flash) or Firefox and see if that helps.

you're probably making the same mistake i did, confusing chrome with chromium.

chrome includes an updated flash, chromium doesn't. at least, that's my current understanding.

No, I meant to say Chrome. Chrome is the proprietary closed source version of Chromium that includes proprietary stuff, such as Flash, and is distributed only by Google. Unless this has changed recently, the only way to get the latest Flash on Linux is through Chrome, as the plugin that works with Firefox is old. Which is why I suggested Chrome. BTW, there's no need to add deb-src entries unless you actually intend

to download package sources and rebuild them. not including them saves download time and RAM for processing more+larger sources.list files.

Agreed here. Seems to be common practise however.

Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au> writes:

On Sun, Mar 29, 2015 at 11:15:30PM +0000, Brian May wrote:

...

No, I meant to say Chrome. Chrome is the proprietary closed source version of Chromium that includes proprietary stuff, such as Flash, and is distributed only by Google.

ah, okay. i didn't realise there was a .deb package for chrome. chromium's in debian itself, so i thought that's what you meant when you said it was packaged.

It's here: $ dget http://http.debian.net/debian/pool/contrib/p/pepperflashplugin-nonfree/peppe... [...] $ grep -rF 'deb ' pepperflashplugin-nonfree-1.8.1/update-pepperflashplugin-nonfree: deb [arch=$arch] http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main [...]

On 31.03.15 11:17, Chris Samuel wrote:

This may also help..

samuel@haswell:~$ apt-cache show pepperflashplugin-nonfree

I added this to sources.lst: deb http://ftp.au.debian.org/debian experimental main contrib non-free but following that with: # apt-get update gave: ... Reading package lists... Done W: Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package php-psr-log-implementation W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems Nope, reiterating the command did not effect any iterative repair. And then: $ apt-cache show pepperflashplugin-nonfree N: Unable to locate package pepperflashplugin-nonfree E: No packages found for laughs I tried: $ apt-cache show -t experimental pepperflashplugin-nonfree N: Unable to locate package pepperflashplugin-nonfree E: No packages found So that pepperflashplugin-nonfree package is still evading this snark hunter. Erik

On 31.03.15 10:44, Trent W. Buck wrote:

It's here:

$ dget http://http.debian.net/debian/pool/contrib/p/pepperflashplugin-nonfree/peppe... [...] $ grep -rF 'deb ' pepperflashplugin-nonfree-1.8.1/update-pepperflashplugin-nonfree: deb [arch=$arch] http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main [...]

Many thanks for that. I'm clearly not holding my mouth right, since adding: deb [arch=$arch] http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main gave: Err http://dl.google.com stable/main $arch Packages 404 Not Found [IP: 150.101.213.174 80] Ign http://dl.google.com stable/main Translation-en_AU Ign http://dl.google.com stable/main Translation-en Fetched 198 B in 21s (9 B/s) W: GPG error: http://dl.google.com stable Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY A040830F7FAC5991 W: Failed to fetch http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/dists/stable/main/binary-$arch/Package... 404 Not Found [IP: 150.101.213.174 80] while: deb arch=i386 http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main gave: E: Malformed line 18 in source list /etc/apt/sources.list (URI parse) E: The list of sources could not be read. It begins to look like these incantations need either a missing local precondition, or interpretation for which I lack the specific experience. Many thanks for persisting with possible solutions. I'll definitely make notes on what works, if anything does. (It has not been a lot of fun so far.) Erik

On 30.03.15 10:03, Craig Sanders wrote:

also note that you're probably better off just installing iceweasel from experimental...after making sure you have a nearby mirror of experimental in your sources.list:

apt-get -t experimental install iceweasel

I had tried that with "-t testing", but that fetched 400 MB of guff, lost X, and there was no longer any gdm to be found. With little to lose, I updated my sources.lst to jessie, and did an "apt-get dist-upgrade". After that, the system wouldn't boot. A re-install from CD later, I have wheezy back - but would like to catch up on my mail backlog before trying the "-t experimental". Anything to reliably view video clips will do. On the emc-users ML there's occasionally links to some CNC machine-porn - even 3D printing in alloy steels or titanium, which I'd hate to be unable to enjoy. Heck, there's occasionally even a good idea which might be useful on my lathe or milling machine. (All on youtube)

current version in experimental is 36.0.4-1 while sid & jessie have only 31.5.3esr-1

this may pull in other updated packages from experimental or sid or jessie.

Yeah, I noticed that on "-t testing" - about 400 MB of it. I just hope to heck that all those "other updated packages" won't just wipe out X again. I'll give it a go. Like the pig squealing on the run-up to the electric fence between it and the turnip patch, I just need to take a deep breath and shut my eyes. Maybe I should down load the .iso for experimental, and install that from scratch, so I'm not mixing vintages to make a tawny debian. Erik

On 02.04.15 23:01, Craig Sanders wrote:

On Thu, Apr 02, 2015 at 09:56:16PM +1100, Erik Christiansen wrote:

...

Anything to reliably view video clips will do.

either iceweasel or chromium will display youtube videos, html5 and even flash if you have the flashplugin-nonfree installed. youtube's flash viewer works with the ancient linux flash.

Ah, here's a flashplugin-nonfree: https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/i386/flashplugin-nonfree/download Oooh, and the other one for chromium: https://packages.debian.org/wheezy-backports/i386/pepperflashplugin-nonfree/... Many thanks! The first allows iceweasel to play BBC news clips. There is a longer wait, and there are no controls: it does not appear possible to switch to fullscreen, or even pause play. (Quite useful, since BBC auto-start the next clip on the tail of the previous, and whack in an advertisement for our delectation. OK, close tab stops that crap.)

vimeo videos seems to work ok in those browsers too.

Yes, that worked without any flashplugin.

on other sites, results will vary.

It does all seem to be a shambles. Back on ubuntu 10.04, it just worked, and it was faster.

as others have suggested, if you really need a recent flash for some videos, try google chrome. not chromium, chrome.

Oh. Wikipedia tells me that "Google Chrome is a freeware web browser". I had thought it was an OS ... or tablet platform, or somesuch. So, trying: $ apt-cache search chrome chromium - Google's open source chromium web browser chromium-browser - Chromium browser - transitional dummy package ... I'll try harder to find it later, but trying chromium with pepperflashplugin-nonfree first, I get "You need to install FlashPlayer to play this content." on the first BBC video clip that I click on. So pepperflashplugin-nonfree isn't doing much good for chromium - it could manage to not play BBC clips without help.

for BBC stuff, though, get_iplayer should be a better bet than flash shit. and you get to download the video to watch whenever you want in the player of your choice, without the hassles of streaming.

With time, I could probably figure out something like: $ get_iplayer <url_pasted_from_clipboard> -c mplayer ... discovering and twiddling options till it works. But it all seems an egregious step backwards from ubuntu 10.04, where it all just worked with nothing more than clickery-pokery in firefox.

...

On the emc-users ML there's occasionally links to some CNC machine-porn [...] (All on youtube)

if it's on youtube, it should be viewable in either iceweasel or chromium. depending on the video, you may need the non-free flash plugin installed. it's packaged for debian as flashplugin-nonfree (actually, that's an installer package that downloads the flash plugin, installs it, and sets it up properly in debian).

Thanks again. That's exactly how it went. e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFrVdoOhu1Q OK, that's not highly linuxy, but there is fleeting reference to harddrive air bearings.

install that. DON'T install just any random shit you download from the net (even from adobe's site) because you will probably mess up your system if you do. don't stray from the packaging system unless you know what you're doing and why.

After first losing X, then the ability to boot, I'm wiser now. Not smarter - just wiser. ...

most likely, iceweasel in jessie or testing will work well enough for you. if not, try the version in experimental. if you try to install it and it wants to install more than about 3 or 4 packages, just abort - it's not worth the likely resulting mess.

I'm still on an older one, wheezy/updates/main: $ apt-cache policy iceweasel iceweasel: Installed: 31.5.3esr-1~deb7u1 Candidate: 31.6.0esr-1~deb7u1 Version table: 37.0-1 0 1 http://ftp.au.debian.org/debian/ experimental/main i386 Packages 31.6.0esr-1~deb7u1 0 500 http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates/main i386 Packages *** 31.5.3esr-1~deb7u1 0 100 /var/lib/dpkg/status 31.3.0esr-1~deb7u1 0 500 http://ftp.au.debian.org/debian/ wheezy/main i386 Packages I'll try the "-t experimental" bit after I've had my computer back for more than a few hours, all of them spent futzing. At least debian 7.8.0 is better than ubuntu 14.04, which on two installs presented a blank desktop, without any menus, either visible or accessible through mousing past a perimeter edge, and without any mouse clickery that I could fluke, to invoke an xterm. I.e. no perceptible means of making the computer do anything other than open a document or "folder". Thanks again for persisting with this. Erik

On Fri, 3 Apr 2015, Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au> wrote:

...

$ apt-cache search chrome

chromium is packaged and in debian. chrome isn't - you either need to download it direct from google or perhaps add a google repository to sources.list (i dunno if they have one).

When you install the .deb Google supplies you get a sources.list entry like the following, it also automatically adds a GPG key to match. # cat /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.list ### THIS FILE IS AUTOMATICALLY CONFIGURED ### # You may comment out this entry, but any other modifications may be lost. deb http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/