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The first beta of Adobe Flash Player 9 for Linux has arrived early. Adobes main goal was to create a player that is feature-comparable to its Windows and Mac OS versions. Unlike Flash 7 for Linux, this version is also meant to have proper audio/video synchronization.
While still only a beta, the new Flash Player appears to have achieved most, if not all, of its goals.
The beta comes in two gzipped, tarball archives. The first one is for the Mozilla plug-in. This version will work with Firefox and SeaMonkey. The other is a GTK-based stand-alone Flash Player, gflashplayer. Either will need to be downloaded manually from the Adobe Labs Web site and unpacked.
To get the plug-in to work, you need to remove any earlier version of Flash and place the new plug-in in its place. For a local user, this will be in the /home/your_id/.mozilla/plugins/ directory. If you install it for the entire system and its users, youll need to install it as root in the /usr/lib/browser_directory/plugins/ directory. If you have multiple versions installed, the version in the systemwide directory, in my testing, takes priority over the local directory.