Fullscreen Flash Freezing Fix
I love alliterative post titles! But I didn’t like the fact that even with my little 64-bit Flash for Ubuntu installer script (updated now, by the way), Flash videos would “freeze” in full-screen. The sound would continue, but the video would freeze. If I pressed Escape to exit full-screen mode, then everything would be fine – it’s just that Flash would never run in full-screen. John Lewis commented about a PPA fix on his blog, but I couldn’t get the PPA to work. I now have a different fix for this, which – so far – seems to be working.
There are two parts to this fix. Maybe only the first one will be necessary for you, but if you have an Nvidia or ATI graphics card, then you might have to do the second part as well.
Firstly, open a terminal window and type:
sudo mkdir /etc/adobe
sudo gedit /etc/adobe/mms.cfg
In the editor, type:
OverrideGPUValidation=true
Close and save the file.
Restart your browser and try running any full-screen Flash movie from YouTube, for example. If this works, then all well and good. If not, then try the following:
Edit the launcher for your chosen web browser, and insert the following before the launcher command:
env LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libGL.so.1
I use Google Chrome (yes…I know!!), so the launcher command was:
/opt/google/chrome/google-chrome --enable-plugins %U
Which becomes:
env LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libGL.so.1 /opt/google/chrome/google-chrome --enable-plugins %U
Again, restart your browser using this launcher, and see if full-screen Flash video works now.
I’m going to avoid the Steve Jobs-like rant with regard to Flash and why it seems to be terminally unstable and insecure, but hopefully this will be one step closer to getting an improved Flash experience on your Ubuntu installation.
Perhaps part of the problem is something to do with the ATI graphics driver. Even the 32 bit version of Flash would work in full-screen for me if I pressed escape and the full screen button enough times, it seemed to improve with the 64 bit version but has never been fully cured. Having said that I haven’t tried full-screen since upgrading to Natty Beta until now. I must have gone in and out of full screen 30 times without a problem.
What wouldn’t work about the PPA for you? Have I made another one of my (in)famous typos?
@John Lewis Heh…no, I don’t think it was a typo. I think there might have been a temporary problem with the repository, because I couldn’t retrieve the GPG key.
Full-screen flash has not worked for a while for me until this fix. The libGL.so.1 fix is supposed to help with ATI and Nvidia driver problems, but I found the mms.cfg option worked for me. I can watch Heston Blumenthal for free on 4OD again now!!
Hey, sorry to bump an old post but this solved my issue and I wanted to say thanks. Linux community is awesome.