I am a member of several Intenet Marketing Programs. My problem is two-fold. What is the best way to choose the most appropriate or best codec from a list of more than one? The best example of this is the list for video plugins that list three different ones.

Secondly, on some membership sites home page there is a button saying things like 1) "You need to upgrade your Flash Player to at least version 8 to view this video content. Click here to download the latest version of Flash Player." This is the message on my Profit Lance site. Well, it's clear to me what to do to install the video codec, BUT what isn't clear is where my version of Ubuntu puts this plugin by default. The biggest problem I repeatedly have is having not being able to actually run the plugin so I can view the video? This totally snows me as a newbie to Linux! How can an "installed" program of any kind not run automatically after it is installed without any additional steps needed?

One other example is this. The main or home page of the site says: "Additonal plugins (plural - now I'm really in trouble)) are required to display all the media on this page." Below this line of text at the top, there is a separate window that says: "click here to download plugin," with some kind of icon I don't even know how to describe. However, this icon is always therewhen I see the message about a plugin or plugins being needed to view some video.

If I click on the words to download the required plugin(s), a new window opens that says "Plugin Finder Service" in its title bar. Then, for example, I see three choices listed: 1) Adobe Flash Player (installer), 2) Swfedc player for Adobe/Macromedia Flash, and 3) Gnash SWF Player. I have noidea which one of these to choose is my problem.

That's about it for now. I honestly didn't see how to avoid making this such a lengthly post without being able to "paste" or transfer any screenshots in any way to a new thread. A question I'll post in another new thread.

Those links on webpages are in the main for the winblows operating system.

For Ubuntu use your Synaptic Package Manager under System--> Administration. Type in the name of the plugin (or software) you require e.g. flash now look in the list and you should see flashplugin-nonfree click the box to select it for install then click the Apply button to do the actual install.

The reason why this plugin (and other stuff) is not installed by default is because they are non-free (there are other examples) and GNU/Linux is (supposed to be) all about free software.

To help get the best out of using Ubuntu I suggest you go here: http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Hardy and take your time to explore the various categories. Feel free to jump to whatever section you are having difficulty with for an overview of how to make it work.

Oh and the way to show screenshots is to use one of the (many) free image hosting services like pastebin and post the link in your thread.