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How to solve the Flash sound problem in Ubuntu Linux
Update: I had the same Flash sound problem with Ubuntu 9.04.

When I upgraded my Ubuntu Linux from Ubuntu 7.10 to Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron I had a problem with sounds on my Linux. This audio problem was related to Flash libraries and I was able to solve it by installing the libflashsupport package.

Yesterday I upgraded my Ubuntu Linux from Ubuntu 8.04 to Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex. The first thing I noticed was that I am no longer able to hear sound from Flash movies on my new Ubuntu 8.10 .

Trying to solve the Flash sound problem with Ubuntu libflashsupport package
The first thing I did was to try playing audio files (mp3, ogg...) using amarok. As opposed to my last Ubuntu sound problem, this time I was able to play and hear audio files. Since my sound problem was related to Flash, I decided to try the same solution that solved my sound problem the last time, to install the libflashsupport package by running the following command:

$ sudo apt-get install libflashsupport

When I run the command I discovered that the package libflashsupport is not available and it was replaced by the flashplugin-nonfree-extrasound package on Ubuntu 8.10.

$ sudo apt-get install libflashsupport
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package libflashsupport is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
However the following packages replace it:
flashplugin-nonfree-extrasound
E: Package libflashsupport has no installation candidate


Solving the Flash sound problem using Ubuntu flashplugin-nonfree-extrasound package
Here is the flashplugin-nonfree-extrasound package description:

This is an open Source extension library for the Adobe Flash Player
that enables support for otherwise unsupported sound systems. It
provides the libflashsupport.so plugin. The sound system to use is
automatically detected:
* It first tries to detect Esound,
* Next, it checks for OSS.

If all of the above failed, it falls back to the ALSA driver that's
built directly into FlashPlayer 9.

I decided to try to install this flashplugin-nonfree-extrasound package, hopefully this will do the same job the libflashsupport package did the last time and will restore the audio to my Flash player.

$ sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree-extrasound

After the flashplugin-nonfree-extrasound was installed I restarted my Firefox, opened a YouTube page and played the video. I no longer had sound problems in my Ubuntu Flash player

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