I hack my way through another Ubuntu 8.04 fix

I'm doing all I can to stick with Ubuntu 8.04, the long-term-support release of the world's most-talked-about Linux distribution.

But when a bug threatens my desktop harmony, I begin both attacking said bug and exploring OS alternatives because the most important thing about this particular installation — my main Toshiba 1100-S101 laptop — is that I keep working with little to no interruption.

I've had a few "issues" now in Ubuntu 8.04 LTS on the Toshiba (1.3 GHz Celeron / 768 MB RAM). Here are the problems and their solutions.

Remember: I'm no coder, so unless the solutions are relatively quick and easy, I probably won't do 'em.

Problem: Every once in awhile, the keyboard stops working in mid-session.

Solution: This could be a hardware issue, or it could be something in Ubuntu. This doesn't happen all that often, but when it does, killing X with ctrl-alt-backspace brings back the keyboard. I consider this a less-than-optimal solution, but a solution nonetheless. I'll be keeping an eye on the issue.

Problem: When I use Flash to, say, watch a video, everything works fine. But then when I try to listen to an audio file with Rhythmbox, the sound doesn't work. Rebooting brings back non-Flash audio.

Solution: A little Googling revealed that this is a common problem. I consider this a serious bug in Ubuntu 8.04, and I can't believe that it hasn't been automatically solved for all users. Turns out it's a problem with the "new" Pulse Audio for Linux. To fix the problem, add the following package (either through Synaptic, apt or Aptitude):

libflashsupport

Yep, just this one package will fix the problem with Flash and Pulse Audio. I quote from the package description:

Support library for sound output of Flash 9 with pulseaudio Due to various bugs in the Flash 9 plugin sound output of Flash 9 through the pulseaudio soundserver doesn't work properly. This library adds a clutch to make Flash 9 sound output in pulseaudio possible.

For further information see http://www.pulseaudio.org/ticket/43 and http://www.pulseaudio.org/wiki/FlashPlayer9Solution

Problem: Flash periodically dies and takes the Firefox browser with it. This happens occasionally with YouTube video but all the time in the Brightcove 3 console, which I use to manage video on our site. Having a critical Web/Flash-based app become unusable is a huge problem.

Solution: I ran a test on my Debian Lenny laptop, which is using a Flash 10 .deb package direct from Adobe. No problem there.

I'm trying not to install lots of packages from outside the usual Ubuntu Hardy (8.04) repositories, and I've been mostly successful in that regard, even though there are more than a few packages for which I'd love a newer version.

Since Ubuntu Hardy uses Flash 9.0.159, I figured that going to Flash 10 one way or another stood a very good chance of solving my problem.

But I didn't want to leave the world of Hardy to do it. So first I tried the Hardy backport of the Flash plugin.

What are backports, you ask? Following that link in the last sentence will tell you all about Ubuntu Backports, but I'll just sum up and say that backports are newer versions of packages that are built to run on older distributions so users can stick with a version of their operating system that is known to work with their hardware (or for other reasons) but get either one, a few or a lot of newer packages without resorting to an upgrade.

Backtracking briefly, I did consider:

• Replacing Ubuntu 8.04 with Debian Lenny
• Upgrading Ubuntu 8.04 to 8.10
• Replacing Ubuntu 8.04 with either Slackware 12.2, Zenwalk 6.0 or another OS to be named later (once I scraped together a few more candidates)

After reading the Ubuntu Backports page, I decided that rather than mess around with my repositories, or resort to the Debian-user practice of mixing Backports and Stable package management through the use of what's called "pinning," since I was only interested in a single package, I'd just grab the .deb and install it on my local machine. (Disadvantage to the latter: Packages not in repositories not recognized by the system won't automatically update. Advantage: It's a simple, intuitive process.)

I easily found the Flash 10 backport for Hardy. But it wouldn't install. The package tries to fetch a file from Adobe/Macromedia, and that particular file is no longer on the Adobe server.

Translation: The package wouldn't install.

The next step: I went into Synaptic and removed the flashplugin-nonfree package, which even though not installed all the way was still "there." (There IS a bug report for this issue, and if this bug is fixed, I still think that Hardy backports is the best way to deal with this issue

Then I went to the Adobe Web site, got the .deb package for Flash 10 and installed it.

Since I didn't mention it, installing .deb packages is easy. In GNOME (Ubuntu's GUI), just click on the package (either double-click in the default setup or single-click, since that's the way I have my Nautilus file manager set up) and then enter your password when prompted.

So far, Flash 10 from Adobe in Ubuntu 8.04 is doing great in Brightcove and appears to be doing just as well with YouTube video. And after about a dozen or more Firefox/Flash crashes Friday night, if this fix turns out to be the right one, a large measure of stability will have re-entered my computing world.

I realize that Flash is a closed-source technology controlled by a single company, and therefore is a huge pain in the ass for all concerned, including myself. But in my particular situation, I need to have it, along with Java, to get a couple of critical tasks done.

In the end: I was ready to hop off Ubuntu 8.04 onto another distro. I had already eliminated Ubuntu 9.04 due to my X issues (although it's possible those issues have been fixed in subsequent 9.04 updates), but I could've easily (or not so easily, given setup time and effort) moved to Ubuntu 8.10, Debian Lenny, Zenwalk, Slackware or even FreeBSD.

I did strongly consider an 8.04-8.10 upgrade, since that would've given me Flash 10 from a Ubuntu repository. If Ubuntu 8.10 would've have also given me OpenOffice 3.0.1, I would've been more inclined to upgrade, but since 8.10 includes the same OO 2.4 I'm running now, I decided to stick with 8.04 (and OO 2.4) and just get Flash 10 manually from Adobe.

For the moment I'm glad to have another Ubuntu 8.04 problem solved. I've bought myself more time with the LTS and don't have to do a reinstall or major upgrade (and risk developing more new problems than I'm solving old ones).

Final, final word: I'm sure at least some of you are thinking, "He should file a bug report." It's possible that this bug is close to mine, although my specific issue (with the Brightcove3 console) isn't one anybody else has come across.