Question

Tried to use Mozilla's extension installer for running flash plugin installation, and now all flash scripts are showing a big gray play button and won't run.

Should I just uninstall the plugin and install flash by itself?

Answer 1

You can install it with 'apt-get',
Check these steps for Ubuntu 9.10 -- should work on 9.04 too.

sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

Answer 2

I've never had much success with installing flash plugins or downloading and installing flash from the Adobe site.

Eventually, though, I discovered a web site which described what do immediately after installing Ubuntu. At the time I was using 8.04 LTS

The procedure involved defining a better set of repositories, so that the apt-get update approach worked, and I can watch flash movies.

this link is one I just found for 9.04 (not the one I used back in 2007, or something)

The key seemed to be the first step:
1. Expand the Software Repository List.