Recently in Windows Category

It has always been a pain to get a recent version of Adobe Flash running on a FreeBSD desktop system. I am a fanatic FreeBSD user, and I use FreeBSD not only for servers but also on my Desktop as well as on my Laptop!

First, Adobe does not offer a native version of Flash for the FreeBSD operating system. However, FreeBSD has the capability to run Linux binaries natively. Therefore there are Linux Flash binaries in the FreeBSD Ports Tree available, which are www/linux-flashplugin7 and www/linux-flashplugin9. I was able to get Linux Flash 7 working on FreeBSD, however the Flash 9 version never worked well for me. Doesn't matter which browser I use. I don't want to list all errors and trails here I faced already. Lot's of websites however already require Flash 9. I found a suboptimal, but at least working, solution for having Flash 9 on FreeBSD. It's called using Windows Firefox on Wine. It works flawlessly :)

First install Wine 1.0 or higher (may ll work with an older version too). Afterwards download Firefox 3 for Windows XP. Run the installer with wine. The installation will work out without any complications.

After installation you can start Firefox with wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Mozilla\ Firefox/firefox.exe.

Now browse to the Adobe website and download the Flash Player for Windows. Afterwards close Firefox and run the Flash installer via Wine using wine install_flash_player.exe.

Now start Firefox again. As you can see, the Flash Player works flawlessly :-)

I hope some day I'll be able to run a more native version of Flash on my FreeBSD. A working Linux Flash 9 would be fine. Even better would be a 100% native version like Gnash, which is an open source implementation of Flash. However, Gnash is still to unstable and lacks features. Maybe next year?

First, it was a nice suprise that I was able to install and run the Elster Formular application (proprietary software for Windows of the german government for registering your taxes online) under Wine.

However, after trying to submit my taxes online, I recv. the following error dialog (and Elster on Windows XP works without problems):

Too bad :/ Well, but recently the german government also offers a Java Applet for submitting the tax infos. I think I'll have to give it a try, so I can avoid using my Windows XP installation :)

I don't know why Elster is not working on Wine. I remember about half an year ago, I was able to submit my tax infos once using Elster on Wine.