Running flash under Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic on an Acer Aspire Revo

So, you've bought a Revo (or something similar) and you've put Linux on it. Maybe you've even managed to get one set up in the living room on the promise of being able to watch "Internet TV". Trouble is, most sites use flash for video and flash under Linux isn't very good.

The Revo is a wonderful little box. It's processor isn't the fastest in the world but with a great graphics chip it's more than capable of delivering HD quality video. The trouble is, flash support for Linux isn't very good. Even with "hardware acceleration" enabled, it doesn't use all the features of the graphics card, so watching full screen can be "choppy". To make matters worse, the standard Windows Manager for Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) is "compiz", which although renders windows well, and comes with some great 3D effects, it categorises colours in a different way to Flash, and so the conversion between the two can make matters worse.

Maybe we can improve it for you a little. I can't promise perfect results, but hopefully we'll get something watchable.

How to Make Flash Watchable

Install Adobe Flash by typing "sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree" in a terminal window , or by using Synaptic Package Manager.
Ensure "hardware acceleration" is enabled in flash (when watching a flash video, right click, select settings and ensure "Enable hardware acceleration" is checked. Flash will remember your setting
Press [ALT]+f2 and type "metacity --replace" to replace compiz window manager with metacity
Test full screen flash in a browser. Did it work?
Press [ALT]+f2 and type "compiz --replace" to put compiz back afterwards

If you liked what you saw, you can permanently replace compiz with metacity like this:

Press [ALT]+f2 and type "gconf-editor"
In gconf-editor navigate to Desktop > gnome -> session -> required_components
Change the "windowmanager" key to "metacity", noting down the previous value in case you need to revert the change
Log out, then log back in again

Things that didn't work

64 bit Linux. Flash support is much improved for 64bit Linux over the last few releases, but it still runs slower than 32bit flash
Running 32bit Linux in VirtualBox under 64bit Linux - poor performance video
Running 32bit Firefox in a 32bit chroot area on a 64bit Linux install - also poor performance video
Disabling Hardware acceleration when using compiz. This helped, but not as well as enabling hardware acceleration under metacity
10.1 alpha distribution of Adobe Flash. No performance improvement over 10.0 version that I could see

References

Why don't Compiz and flash mix? See Adobe's Linux blog.

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