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Adding Pepper Flash to Chromium

Adobe stopped their Flash support for Linux some time ago. However, you can still get the latest Flash through Google’s Pepper Flash player. This comes with Google Chrome, but if you’re using Chromium you will have to add it manually. Fortunately, its easy to do.

For Linux Mint 17+ the Pepper Flash is available via the default repositoies. Just do this:

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$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install pepperflashplugin-nonfree

If you’re running an earlier version of Mint you’ll need to do this:

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$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:skunk/pepper-flash
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install pepflashplugin-installer

After Pepper Flash plugin is installed, you’ll need to tell Chromium to use it. Run this command as root:

echo ". /usr/lib/pepflashplugin-installer/pepflashplayer.sh" >> /etc/chromium-browser/default

It may be the case that the above command will not be sufficient if the /etc/chromium-browser/default file is constantly being overwritten. If this is the case, then you have a couple of choices.

The best choice would be to add the CHROMIUM_USER_FLAGS variable to your $HOME/.profile file. Since this filename starts with a dot (.) it will be hidden. Rest assured it does exist in your home directory.

$HOME/.profile
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## add the next two lines, using the correct Flash version
export FLASH_VERSION=14.0.0.145
export CHROMIUM_USER_FLAGS="--ppapi-flash-path=/usr/lib/pepflashplugin-installer/libpepflashplayer.so --ppapi-flash-version=$FLASH_VERSION"

If you would rather make the change system-wide, find the chromium-browser script, search for the CHROMIUM_FLAGS variable, and add the following two lines below it:

/usr/bin/chromium-browser
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# Prefer user defined CHROMIUM_USER_FLAGS (fron env) over system
# default CHROMIUM_FLAGS (from /etc/$APPNAME/default)
CHROMIUM_FLAGS=${CHROMIUM_USER_FLAGS:-"$CHROMIUM_FLAGS"}
# add the next two lines, using the correct Flash version
FLASH_VERSION=14.0.0.145
CHROMIUM_FLAGS="$CHROMIUM_FLAGS --ppapi-flash-path=/usr/lib/pepflashplugin-installer/libpepflashplayer.so --ppapi-flash-version=$FLASH_VERSION"

Restart Chromium, and load the chrome://plugins page to verify that the plugin is active. (Note that if you see a Flash plugin with a version of 11.2 or lower, then that is an old, non-PPAPI version of Flash. A current version of Pepper Flash will be 11.7 or higher.)