On Ubuntu, installing the Flash player is easy:

$ sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

What’s not so easy is getting Icecat to use it.

I installed Icecat in /usr/local/src, and symlinked “icecat” to the actual directory. So, my Icecat plugins are in /usr/local/src/icecat/plugins. Here’s how I linked the flash plugin in:

$ cd /usr/local/src/icecat/plugins
$ ln -s /usr/lib/flashplugin-nonfree/libflashplayer.so libflashplayer.so

I did this while Icecat was running, and immediately had flash capability. I confirmed by typing “about:plugins” into the URL box.

For the Java plugin, I downloaded j2se 1.4 (which is EoL’d, by the way!!) from here:

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/index.jsp

In much the same fashion, I cd’d to /usr/local/src, and moved the binary there. I ran this:

$ sudo sh j2re-1_4_2_18-linux-i586.bin

to extract the files. Then I ran the following commands:

$ sudo ln -s j2re1.4.2_18 java
$ cd /usr/local/src/icecat/plugins/
$ sudo ln -s /usr/local/src/java/plugin/i386/ns610-gcc32/libjavaplugin_oji.so libjavaplugin_oji.so

Keep in mind that this is for my previous icecat install.  For firefox, the plugin will go in /usr/lib/firefox-3.0/plugins, and for Iceweasel on Debian, it will go in /usr/lib/iceweasel/plugins.

This was also done while Icecat was running, without issue. Now, I can surf Hulu and YouTube and play java applet games at work! Shh, don’t tell!

/cs