Fix Debian Etch Flash Problem by Deleting swf-player 
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A very strange solution to a problem that has been ongoing on my new Debian Etch installation: I was not able to view any Flash content in my web browsers. I followed the instructions that came up in my browser about installing the necessary plugin. After I did that, Flash content still didn't work. Instead, every Flash area on a browser page showed this message:
"This SWF file is known to trigger bugs in the swfdec decoder. Playback is cancelled."
A search for this issue returns many pages, such as Debian bug report #415236. It looks like the problem is resolved in later versions of swfdec, but these later versions are not part of the standard Etch package list.
Among all the pages I browsed, one person talked about seeing the Flash problem go away after he removed some swf-related Debian packages. So, I decided to experiment along these lines. Though it seemed unlikely that this would help, I removed the swf-player package:
quadcore:/home/kevin# apt-get remove swf-player Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree... Done The following packages will be REMOVED: swf-player 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 5 not upgraded. Need to get 0B of archives. After unpacking 184kB disk space will be freed. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y (Reading database ... 77731 files and directories currently installed.) Removing swf-player ...
Then, I closed and relaunched Firefox, went to a web page that includes Flash, and to my utter surprise: it worked! I went to another site that uses Flash, and that worked too!
The problem seems solved, as a result of removing the sfw-player package.
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