Installing latest Flash Player 11rc on Debian Squeeze

Here is a little HOWTO about clean installation of  the latest release candidate of Adobe Flash Player 11 on Debian Squeeze. It should also work on Ubuntu and other derivatives of Debian.

The method proposed here uses Debian's Alternatives System which makes it possible to install latest Flash Player in a dedicated directory and  switch between it or the default version installed from Debian repository (v10) if needed.

1. Install flashplugin-nonfree (standard Debian repository) or flashplayer-mozilla (debian-miultimedia repository). This will install Flash Player 10.
2. Download latest Flash Player for Linux from Adobe.
3. Unpack it to /opt/flashplayer-11rc1 (or any other directory of your choice).
4. Add entry for Flash Player 11 in the Alternatives System:
   sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/flash-mozilla.so flash-mozilla.so /opt/flashplayer-11rc1/libflashplayer.so 0
5. Switch between installed Flash Player versions (will launch interactive menu):
   sudo update-alternatives --config flash-mozilla.so

Please note that  Flash Player tarball contains a few other files that you may find interesting - such as flash-player-properties configuration tool. They won't be automatically picked by the above procedure, as update-alternatives for flash-mozilla.so maintains plugin symlink only. See man page for update-alternatives for more information.