No sound in Flash, online help not solving the problem

[Dave M G]

Ubuntu Users,

I discovered recently that I can no longer hear any sound when playing 
Flash videos in FireFox.

Sound works with every other application, so this is specific to Flash. 
According to Adobe's web site, I have version 9,0,31,0 installed.
http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/about/

Of course, I hit the web, and came across this web page:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=204022

And tried the following, as suggested:
dave at homebase:~/Desktop$ sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libesd.so.0 
/usr/lib/libesd.so.1
ln: creating symbolic link `/usr/lib/libesd.so.1' to 
`/usr/lib/libesd.so.0': File exists
dave at homebase:~/Desktop$ sudo mkdir -p /tmp/.esd/
dave at homebase:~/Desktop$ sudo touch /tmp/.esd/socket

Didn't work.

In another thread:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=526551
...it suggested to add my username to the audio group in /etc/group. My 
name was already there.

I tried editing /etc/firefox/firefoxrc and changing FIREFOX-DSP="aoss" 
to "alsa". Still no joy.

So then it comes to this horrible web page:
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flash_Player:Additional_Interface_Support_for_Linux#Source_code
which apparently solves some problems, but it's so technical that I'm 
wondering if I'm on the wrong path here. I mean, is getting Flash to run 
really supposed to be this complicated?

Anyway, I tried finding the dependencies they require. I couldn't find 
ICU, or any development package for OSS in Synaptic.

I tried downloading their script and giving it a shot anyway:
$ cc -shared -O2 -Wall -Werror -licuuc -lssl flashsupport.c -o 
libflashsupport.so
flashsupport.c:158:25: error: openssl/ssl.h: No such file or directory
cc1: warnings being treated as errors
flashsupport.c: In function ‘FPX_Init’:
flashsupport.c:245: warning: implicit declaration of function 
‘SSL_library_init’
flashsupport.c: At top level:
flashsupport.c:268: error: syntax error before ‘SSL’
...

It goes on and on like this.

Man... I just want to hear stuff in Flash. I don't know which clowns are 
responsible for making it such a hassle, but this seems way, way more 
problematic than it should be.

Anyway... griping aside. Given the above, what should I do next?

-- 
Dave M G
Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft
Kernel 2.6.20-5-generic
Pentium D Dual Core Processor
PHP 5, MySQL 5, Apache 2