Try as I might to get Mozilla (SeaMonkey) and Firefox on Linux (CentOS 4.6 and 5.x), all versions of both browsers and all versions of Flash, either from source compiles, (tricking and modifying) install scripts, to RPM’s, some intended for the 64 bit platform, Adobe Flash would sporadically work or fail. It would work for minutes, hours or days, but eventually overload the browser and I’d end up hitting a page with dozens of flash files, each of which prompted for the plugin to be installed (even though it was, it just resulted in npviewer.bin segmentation fault (segfault) errors).

Adobe seems to have little or no interest in supporting Linux 64 bit. One developer at Adobe was thoughtful enough to offer some solutions, but ultimately, these versions failed. After the prompts for the plugin and sporadic instances of Flash working or not, the browser tabs and windows would disappear in an instant and instantly crash. Having tried every possible combination (I did get it to work, after all, in many different ways), never resulted in a stable install.

Therefore, I have finally gave in and simply decided to force the installs of the browsers as well as the Flash plugins, to use 32 bit (linux32). I was resisting this, because I hate to resort to accepting defeat with tasks and problems I have so closely almost resolved so many times, and I still had other ideas and tweaks, but since so many sites require or include Flash, it became too much of annoyance (and then worse, a legitimate problem). I was not liking the options presented altogether, since Adobe won’t release the source code. Even if they would, I really don’t have a lot of interest in spending time modifying their code in an attempt to fix it (and then what about the next update?) Luckily, I didn’t have the option, since they wouldn’t release the source anyway (not actually a good thing, but made the decision easier and therefore saved time).

After fighting a losing battle, and just saving time and hassle, after it become too frequent, I simply resorted to forcing 32 bit for Mozilla/SeaMonkey and Firefox. You can use linux32 to install the programs, if you need to (especially for the install script for Flash, or it’ll error with an x86_64 arch incompatibility and will not run (linux32 actually uses setarch so uname -m (machine/hardware info) outputs/sees in86/arch instead of x86_64)), but ultimately the primary and simple solution is to use the path to use linux32 before the command (the path to the browser binary file). I was well aware of this, but simply resisted in an all too long, waste of time, attempt to fix the issues of another company’s browser plugin/addon that is compiled so I can’t change it or have the control that would be needed to resolve the bugs anyway.

So here I am, finally enjoying the fact that my browser works in Flash (even if the browser has to run as 32 bit now), and not being prompted for plugins or seeing the browser crash and instantly lose all of my open tabs/windows. I gave it a good shot and in the end, it was better to just go with what will work. A little disappointing, but I didn’t have time to mess with that anyway. It’s just a browser and it just needs to work, securely and efficiently, and allow me to view sites I need to view (most of my day is spend in an SSH shell command line anyway). Sometimes it’s better to move on and not fight the inevitable. For those of you having random bugs with the Adobe Flash browser plugin on 64 bit Linux systems, I recommend you heed this advice, as I’ve tried all solutions and even many of my own and it was never 100% successful. Linux32 will serve you well in this case (also for the java browser plugin, in case you are wondering about that, too — everything else works great in 64 bit. Too bad it’s not a viable option at this time).