There is now a Ubuntu packaged 64bit version of Flash. This is something that any user running Ubuntu Linux on current hardware (P4/Athlon64 or newer) should be pleased to hear (just skip on over this post if you are running a 32bit OS on your 64bit hardware).
For quite some time there have been manual ways to go about installing cutting edge 64bit flash on Linux Desktop systems. Personally, rather than pollute my system with non-packaged cruft, I prefer to rely entirely on packaged goods when it comes to my applications. Knowing that a packaged version of 64bit Flash has been sitting in Debian Squeeze repos since 2007, and seen a lot of *exercise*, is in support of the stability now present in the 64bit version.
The process is easy if you have Ubuntu Tweak (I strongly recommend this for managing your PPAs and other external APT sources).
1. Select the 64bit Flash Plugin APT Source (this adds it to your /etc/apt/sources.list) and inserts the apt gpg key into your key store.
2. Select the 64bit Flash Plugin Application (this executes an apt-get install flashplugin64-installer) and inserts the apt gpg key into your key store.
Personally, I have experienced the need to *reload* pages with flash for quite some time and become used to the process. Any regular 64bit linux user running the 32bit plugin should be familiar with these issues. It is most annoying when showing my 21 month-old son clips of animals and trucks and such on You Tube, as he does not have the patience for the npviewer.bin crash that results in *waiting* and *re-loading* various YouTube pages. Now with the 64bit version, we can go right from garbage trucks to giraffes without any fear of a big delay.
As a side note, if you are running on an older Pentium 4 you may need to employ a workaround due to a missing LAHF instruction in your hardware. (I have a 2.9Mhz P4 with this issue) You will experience a crash on every flash page, and if you launch firefox from a terminal window the output will state: illegal instruction. If this applies to you, read this post to verify, and follow the instructions there.
