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When my web browser informs me that my version of Flash is outdated, I update with the command 

$ sudo apt-get install flashplugin-installer

Which works fine except the download is very slow (e.g., right now it's about 40 KiB/s). Googling the zipped flash file shows many possible sources for it, some of which must be faster for me than the one Canonical is using.

My question: is there a way to pass a parameter to the apt command above to download the file from a different source? I would like to continue to use the package manager to update Flash, but I want it to go faster than the 5-10 minutes it currently takes.

Edit: This question asks about changing the entire apt repository to download faster. I can download any other package at my university's lightning speed (MiB/s?; I don't even notice), except for this one Flash package. I would like to know more about passing specific parameters into apt for single uses instead of changing my entire software source list.

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user1717828
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    I'm not sure that there is an easy solution, but unless it came from a trusted source (APT gets it from the trusted Adobe part of the Canonical partner repository) I definitely wouldn't trust it, most of the zipped up versions you'll find on sites which are not official ones are likely to be Trojans and you'll probably just end up with spyware or a ransomware infection... I don't think that APT will be able to deal with the compressed file types anyway, it requires deb files... Also if you do install it from somewhere other than the standard repo it won't be able to receive updates. –  Apr 11 '16 at 15:16
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    Use a different mirror http://askubuntu.com/questions/37753/how-can-i-get-apt-to-use-a-mirror-close-to-me-or-choose-a-faster-mirror – Panther Apr 11 '16 at 15:22
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    Adobe has removed support for Linux version of flash long ago. It is strongly suggested that you switch either to pepper flash in Google Chrome or use HTML 5 for viewing flash content – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy Apr 11 '16 at 15:23
  • @Serg, I'm using Firefox, not Chrom[e/ium]. Can you tell me how to switch/update Flash per your suggestion? – user1717828 Apr 11 '16 at 16:24
  • @Serg, Also, why am I getting new version of Flash with apt-get install flashplugin-installer if Adobe stopped updating? – user1717828 Apr 11 '16 at 16:25
  • @user1717828 Adobe removed support for Linux version as of 11.2. If you do apt-cache policy flashplugin-installer you should see 11.2.202.577 as the newest candidate. For windows , newest version is 21 . I know you are using firefox, my comment about Chrome was just a suggestion. Ultimately it's up to you to use the dated flash player or switch to something else. Chrome's pepper flash is still kept up to date though. As for firefox, newer versions should have support for HTML5 out of the box, but there are addons available – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy Apr 11 '16 at 16:54
  • @ Serg, Odd, I have $apt-cache policy flashplugin-installer \\ flashplugin-installer: Installed: 11.2.202.616ubuntu0.14.04.1 – user1717828 Apr 11 '16 at 17:05
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    @bodhi.zazen: Switching mirror wouldn't make much of a difference, since most of the downloaded data, the adobe-flashplugin tar archive, is grabbed from Canonical Partner, which is not mirrored. – Gunnar Hjalmarsson Apr 11 '16 at 17:29

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