Adobe has recently announced its plan to abandon Flash Player for Linux platform (through Netscape API to be specific) and limit it to Pepper API which is only available in Google Chrome. Thus leaving Firefox, Opera and other small browsers in doll drums.

It is a good time to look for Alternates, and Lightspark is one such alternate and is open source.

Lightspark, is  an LGPLv3 licensed Flash player and browser plugin written in C++/C that runs on Linux. Lightspark support Adobe’s newer Flash formats and AVM2 virtual machine.

The Lightspark player is completely portable. Lightspark has been successfully built on Ubuntu on PowerPC, x86, ARM and AMD64 architectures.

Installing Lightspark in Ubuntu:

For the latest version of lightspark, use the following PPA for Ubuntu 11.10 and 12.04:

  • $ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:sparkers/daily
  • $ sudo apt-get update
  • $ sudo apt-get install lightspark browser-plugin-lightspark

 Enjoy!