Install 64 bit Flash Player Plugin For Firefox In Ubuntu Linux [HowTo]

Adobe has released the much requested flash plugin that runs natively in 64 bit Linux machines.

This means that if you are having a 64 bit processor and a 64 bit Linux distribution, then you don’t have to go the roundabout way of installing a 32 bit flash player with nspluginwrapper anymore, to get things working.

Though the title says Ubuntu, the following steps are applicable for all Linux distributions:

1. First, remove any flash plugins that you have installed. This includes any 32 bit adobe flash plugin or other open source plugins like Gnash.
2. Close Firefox and run the following command from a terminal:
   wget http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplayer10/libflashplayer-10.0.d20.7.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz && ( [ -d ~/.mozilla/plugins ] || mkdir ~/.mozilla/plugins ) && tar zxvf libflashplayer*.tar.gz -C ~/.mozilla/plugins
3. Open firefox. Type about:plugins into the address bar and see the details of the plugin.

Note that the plugin is currently in alpha stage and might be a bit buggy. The adobe flash player 10 FAQ page says that the plugin has been tested on Ubuntu 8 and OpenSUSE 11 with Firefox 3 browser.

Can anyone here post their 64 bit flash plugin experience in other distributions like Fedora, Slackware etc?