Howto: Fix Firefox and epiphany web browsers from crashing when using flash sites like youtube!

The other day my girlfriend was surfing on myspace tv and youtube and firefox kept on randomly closing on her, and she said to me... Firefox sucks, and so does ubuntu, so im like nah it doesnt suck, its just a bug that all applications have that needs to be fixed, she said to me... "a bug" like a virus?... lol I said no, just a mistake in the developers implementation/port for linux that I will fix for you this weekend, so she said ok, and I searched launchpad and fixed the issue..
Here is what I found:

It seems Flash has a compatibility issue with pulseaudio and randomly crashes on most flash sites, it really sucks, and it angers my friends to the max. What this fix will do is grey out the flash area when flash itself crashes and leaves firefox or another browser alone so you are able to save your work and restart your browser safely. Alternatively you may want to use swfdec or gnash and I have provided a easy 1-click solution after this quick fix:

This is a quick fix that will require the terminal: Applications->Accessories->Terminal
wget http://launchpadlibrarian.net/13470096/nspluginwrapper_0.9.91.5-2ubuntu2_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i nspluginwrapper_0.9.91.5-2ubuntu2_i386.deb
sudo apt-get remove --purge flashplugin-nonfree
sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

This should fix the issue of crashing your browser, alternatively you may want to try a different free flash player like swfdec, or gnash if you just watch videos and play movies. Swfdec and Gnash are more secure and not vulnerable to the same bugs/exploits as Adobe flash because it is opensource and you will notice that these alternatives use less ram/cpu power as well. The only issue I have had with the free flash players is that you cannot upload or use web forms, which I rarely use anyways.

Howto: Get rid of Adobe Flash and install a free flash player!

Make sure you remove flashplugin-nonfree if you intend to use these flash alternatives:
sudo apt-get remove --purge flashplugin-nonfree

Click here to install swfdec adobe flash alternative

Click here to install the gNash Adobe Flash Alternative!

If the above solution's do not work for you please see the official bug report here

Clicky Web Analytics