[olug] Linux, Firefox, and Flash Video problems...

[Dan Linder]

For a long time we've fought the battle of the incompatible/buggy
plug-ins to support various video formats used on some web pages.
I've been fighting it so much that I've almost given up trying to get
some sites to work in all Linux installs I play with.

I was trying to view the TWiT live stream (http://live.twit.tv/) - of
course it works beautiifully on Windows7+Firefox, but Ubuntu+Firefox
wasn't working...as was par for the course.

As chance would have it, I saw someone mention in the chat room that
they were getting some lag in their Linux browser and were trying to
debug it.

What?!? I thought...

I decided that I was tired of watching this on my Windows box so I ran
firefox from the command line with the "-safe-mode" option:

    dan at titan:~/$ firefox -safe-mode

When I did that, the video worked perfectly (in that and many other sites too).

I then restarted Firefox and selectively disabled a handfull of the
add-ons (Tools -> Add-ons).  In my case the "Adblock" plug-in (not
"Adblock Plus") was the thing killing the video.  (I left "Adblock
Plus" installed - maybe the other Adblock add-on was out-dated...)

Just thought I'd share this with anyone else fighting to get some
basic functionality in their Linux world.

DanL

-- 
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"I do not fear computers, I fear the lack of them." -- Isaac Asimov (Author)
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