7

I have tried following http://wiki.debian.org/FlashPlayer but on the very first command:

sudo aptitude install flashplugin-nonfree

I get:

oshirowanen@debian:~$ sudo aptitude install flashplugin-nonfree
[sudo] password for oshirowanen: 
No candidate version found for flashplugin-nonfree
No candidate version found for flashplugin-nonfree
No packages will be installed, upgraded, or removed.
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B of archives. After unpacking 0 B will be used.                              
oshirowanen@debian:~$

No idea what I'm doing wrong.

user
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oshirowanen
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1 Answers1

10

Check your settings in /etc/apt/sources.list.

If this is a fresh install, most likely you don't have the contrib and non-free portions enabled yet. Look for the line that says

deb http://ftp.XX.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main

and change it to 

deb http://ftp.XX.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main contrib non-free

then run apt-get update and try again. It should be there as flashplugin-nonfree.

Adobe's Flash plugin, while freely downloadable, doesn't meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) which define "free" as "open source", so debian has created a downloader package in the contrib section which can then download and install the flash player.

Shadur
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  • Actually, some open source software is considered non-free by Debian. I think `pico`/`pine` fall into that category, for example (partially hence `nano`) because at least historically, while the source code was available and free to edit, modified versions could not be distributed freely. – user Apr 08 '13 at 14:17
  • @MichaelKjörling "open source" means more than you can look at the source code. E.g., if you're willing to jump through enough hoops, you can [look at the source code of Windows](http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sharedsource/default.aspx) but no one in their right mind would call Windows open source. That said, yes, there are edge cases which people disagree if they're free software or open source. – derobert Apr 08 '13 at 16:34
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    `pico` and `pine` have very stringent licensing requirements that demand that any repackaging in binary form *must* be a "proper" compilation of the original source, without any kind of patches or modifications to installation directories. Its author is kind of a prima donna that way; debian is one of the few distros that actually took him at his word and responded by recategorizing it as `non-free`. You download the source plus debian patches and run an automated compile/install script. – Shadur Apr 08 '13 at 17:23
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    @derobert In the context of this answer, what matters is the [Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG)](http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines). For example, about pico/pine, DFSG point 3 says "The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.". See also what [DFSG licenses: the MIT license](http://wiki.debian.org/DFSGLicenses#The_MIT_License) or [DFSG and Software License FAQ (Draft) point 4](http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html) has to say about pine. – user Apr 09 '13 at 08:11
  • @MichaelKjörling Yep, for Debian, DFSG is what matters (and take a look at the authors of that FAQ in Q40). But distributing modified versions matters for ["open source"](http://opensource.org/osd-annotated) as well. The open source definition was based largely on the DFSG after all. – derobert Apr 09 '13 at 14:58
  • @derobert More precisely, the DFSG is currently pretty much the closest thing to a formally written up description of what we mean when we say "open source" so other descriptions tend to hew toward it. – Shadur Apr 09 '13 at 15:15