Comment 281 for bug 192888

Using nspluginwrapper is an imperfect solution. I have some good news on the situation, but it depends on other bugs getting fixed.

I mentioned in a previous post that Flash 10 beta 2 is unstable even without libflashsupport installed. This issue specific to the new Flash version is not PulseAudio related, and has been identified and fixed in Firefox upstream or our bug #239182 (and it seems will be fixed in xulrunner 1.9.0.2).

For Intrepid, this is the situation: as soon as xulrunner is patched or upgraded to 1.9.0.2 (bug #239182) and the proposed PulseAudio ALSA plugin configuration in bug #198453 gets implemented, Flash v10 beta 2 will work perfectly with no random crashes as reported in this bug or bug #239182. Furthermore, Flash will correctly use PulseAudio output without the need for libflashsupport (note that libflashsupport needs to remain uninstalled, as it will continue to cause problems, and the PulseAudio ALSA plugin replaces its function).

For Hardy, we could theoretically implement the same configuration as Intrepid, but we would need to upgrade libasound2 and libasound2-plugins (as well as Flash), because Hardy's older ALSA pcm_pulse plugins do not seem to forward sound properly to PulseAudio with many ALSA applications. Fixing Hardy is not so straightforward, as the newer libasound2 may cause regressions.

As it stands, we can easily fix this bug for Intrepid, but Hardy is more complicated. I would argue that we should implement the necessary changes in Intrepid for testing purposes ASAP, and consider the feasibility of applying the same configuration for Hardy later.

Intrepid users can follow this guide and test the patched xulrunner packages to easily implement the configuration I propose:
1. PulseAudio Fixes (distilled): http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=866965
2. Patched xulrunner packages: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=5472028&postcount=33