Flash and Java Browser Plugins on AMD64 Ubuntu 7.04
I recently put Ubuntu 7.04 on a machine with an AMD Athlon 64-bit processor. One of the immediate challenges with just about every 64-bit Linux Distribution is getting Flash and Java browser plugins to work. I found an excellent howto that provides a script to install a 32-bit version of Firefox (and a few other Firefox variants) with plugins for Flash, Java, and mplayer.
Note, in lieu of this approach, you can use a 64-bit browser and install nspluginwrapper to support a 32-bit Flash plugin, as I discuss here. As for Java, you can install a Blackdown Java and a 64-bit Blackdown Java browser plugin through the Synaptic package manager.
Note, if you use CUPS for printing, the printing system will be 64-bit and will not work with your newly installed 32-bit browser. An easy workaround is to print to a postscript or pdf file. Then you can open the file with a 64-bit postscript or pdf viewer and print the file. The default postscript and pdf viewers are 64-bit unless you’ve explicitly changed them.
This approtch is really bad. It causes many issues regarding package versions and future installation and upgrading of your 64 bit packages.