For various reasons I wanted to install the latest Firefox with the latest Flash on my Linux computer. Should be quick and easy right. Turns out there’s a few exceptions!

First step is easy, download Firefox, the one I got was firefox-24.0.tar.bz2

Extract it and put the firefox folder in your home folder so it will look like ~/firefox

To make sure it’s a clean install, type in a terminal: rm -fr ~/.mozilla

Now, download the latest flash and here’s the first exception, even though your computer can be in 64 bit, the only available Firefox that can be downloaded on the official Firefox webpage is is 32 bit only. If you do have a 64 bit computer, when going to Adobe Flash download page, you will need to click on the ‘Need Flash Player for a different computer?’ link and choose Linux (32 bit).

Download it, extract it, open up Firefox with ~/firefox/firefox-bin which will create the folder ~/.mozilla and close Firefox

Create this folder: ~/.mozilla/plugins and put the file libflashplayer.so inside it

In the flash file you downloaded, there will be a usr folder, you need to merge it with your own /usr folder like so:

sudo cp -R install_flash_player_11_linux.i386/usr/* /usr/

Open up Firefox again, check your Plugins by going to Tools / Add-ons or opening up a new page to about:plugins and if you see Shockwave Flash, you’re done!

If you don’t, here’s another exception, go into ~/.mozilla/firefox/ and inside there will be a folder with random characters ending with .default, go into it and paste the content of the pluginreg.dat file, it’s possible that another installation of Flash is in conflict, here’s what I had in my file:

[INVALID]
/usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so:$
1381528979000:$
/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so:$
1381529552000:$

Remove all of those file in the INVALID section, then the pluginreg.dat file and open up Firefox again, it will rescan all of your plugins.

However, it is still possible to install the official Firefox in 64 bit with Flash in 64 bit too, download Firefox 64 bit here and get Flash 64 bit here.