Making the Flash plugin audio handling not suck

micampe — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 00:37:00 -0700

Another tip like last one so that I can remember it. The Macromedia Flash plugin on Linux is stuck on using directly the /dev/dsp, so you’re left to either listening to audio from Flash or from anything else.

An hack is available but, as explained by the Ubuntu team, it makes Firefox unstable (but it’s still the plugin’s fault because it runs in the same process, but plugins should run in another process, bla bla bla).

Reading the comments in that bug, though, I found another workaround: install the alsa-oss package, wich wraps calls to /dev/dsp and routes them to ALSA, then edit /etc/firefox/firefoxrc or ~/.mozilla/firefox/rc (the latter takes precedence on the former, if it exists) and put FIREFOX_DSP="aoss" in there.

Then restart Firefox and enjoy. It looks stable for now on Ubuntu Dapper.

Michele Campeotto: Tag sound

Making the Flash plugin audio handling not suck