How to play Flash swf files in Ubuntu Linux (works also for Windows and Mac)

 A long time ago, I found a wonderful animation that was available as a flash .swf file. In those days, I was able to play this on my Linux computer in Firefox.

These days, however, Flash is no longer supported and my old instructions do not work anymore. It took me a while to find the solution. But it's really simple and I want to share it here.

A player for Adobe Flash content is still available at the Adobe web page. I just seems that they do not really promote it, but you find it here:  https://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/debug_downloads.html

What you need is the "Flash Player Projector content debugger". This is available or Windows, Mac, and, ... ,yes: Linux. It comes as a .tar.gz file. Now, you either already know what to do, or, if not, just follow these simple step-by-step instructions:

• Open a terminal, and create a new directory, maybe "flash", and enter it
  mkdir flash
  cd flash
• Copy your .swf file(s) into this directory (using command line or file browser) .
• Also copy the file that you downloaded from Adobe "flash_player_sa_linux_debug.x86_64.tar.gz" into this directory.
• Unpack the file
  tar -xf flash_player_sa_linux_debug.x86_64.tar.gz
  Or, from the file browser: right-click on the file, and "extract here".
  Now you have the unpacked file "flashplayerdebugger"
  
• Play your .swf file 
  ./flashplayerdebugger my-flash-file.swf
  (of course, replace "my-flash-file.swf" with the name if your .swf file).
  The "./" is needed! Otherwise the system will not find the executable.

And maybe you were wondering what file I wanted to play? It's still available on the web, here: https://7chan.org/fl/src/independent_woman.swf  (right-click, and "save as")

(yes, it's singing cats!)