Stop Flash From Locking System Audio
I’ve found that loading a Flash applet in Firefox will cause Firefox to lock my whole system’s audio playback. Audio and video in Totem don’t even start to play when this happens. Until Firefox is closed, the only application that can play audio is Flash.
The libflashsupport package will fix this by forcing Flash to work properly with PulseAudio, which is new to Ubuntu 8.04. However, this package not installed by default because it has been know to cause stability problems.
Installing libflashsupport makes things work as expected; I can play Flash and audio from other applications at the same time. I haven’t had any stability problems so far, but your mileage may vary.
Install it from the package libflashsupport (click the link to install), or by running the command below in your terminal:
sudo apt-get install libflashsupport
You’ll need to restart Firefox for the change to take effect.
Archived Comments
Christer Edwards
potential stability problems from flash or potential stability problems from libflashsupport. I guess its a gamble either way ehh? ;)
Mohan
Wow, you have been reading my mind. Yesterday it was the extensive disk usage by firefox and now this, thanks man. I shall do this once I get home from work. Thanks for the info.
BOK
Thanks for the hint! I ran into this situation last night after re-installing Ubuntu 8.04. Had a rought time the days before regarding the soundcard configuration (SIS7012 / snd-intel8x0), but once it was working this one came around…
temy
It does make Firefox highly unstable…however, worth to try. You can always deinstall it.
Robert
Thanks dude!! You helped fix my last major gripe with hardy. I had no idea how to fix this before. Thanks again!!
Ed
This fix is way too unstable for me to use. Is there any way to disable PulseAudio, only use ALSA?
brock
thanks you i hated having to switch from firfox to banshee all the time during the absence of music or videos.
Anonymous
Thank you big time! That bug has been very annoying lately!
arimus
w00t. Thank you very much. I was starting to consider switching distros this has been soooooo annoying.
Anonymous
Thankyou for this!!
Do you have any idea on why it is not included bu default?