Netflix fix for Ubuntu users

Mrs_Money

This may help someone - apparently there is no app and no way to watch Netflix in Linux without this fix.
(this assumes you have Ubuntu version 14.04 and Google Chrome installed).
I'm no techie, but my DS informs me it is so!

esuhl

Huh... so... Netflix normally requires Silverlight, but in Linux you can use Pipelight and WINE instead. Seems straightforward enough.

http://fds-team.de/cms/articles/2013-08/pipelight-using-silverlight-in-linux-browsers.html
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pipelight

Mrs_Money

Haha! I'll have to take your word for that! A techie, I'm not!

Geodark

esuhl wrote: »

Huh... so... Netflix normally requires Silverlight, but in Linux you can use Pipelight and WINE instead. Seems straightforward enough.

http://fds-team.de/cms/articles/2013-08/pipelight-using-silverlight-in-linux-browsers.html
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pipelight

I am still on trying to get that to work - their are problems if you have ubuntu on a usb device instead of a physical hard drive. It's all I need to get sorted before I push it over and replace XP on a physical hard drive! But don't want to do that until I know everything I do at the minute I can do in ubuntu! Catch 22 I guess!

esuhl

Geodark wrote: »

I am still on trying to get that to work - their are problems if you have ubuntu on a usb device instead of a physical hard drive.

Is the problem that you have used the live image installer, so you can't install new software that persists after rebooting...?

If so, you should be able to fix that by installing using the standard (non-live) image. I'm not familiar with Ubuntu, but does any of this help:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/20502/install-applications-on-livecd-usb

Rather than getting rid of XP completely, you could partition the drive and set-up a dual boot system. The bootable version of GParted (for example) allows you to re-size existing partitions so you shouldn't need to reinstall XP. But make sure you have backups just incase! Anyway, that would get round the problem of not being able to install software (if that is the problem you're having).

http://gparted.org/livecd.php

Geodark

esuhl wrote: »

Is the problem that you have used the live image installer, so you can't install new software that persists after rebooting...?

If so, you should be able to fix that by installing using the standard (non-live) image. I'm not familiar with Ubuntu, but does any of this help:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/20502/install-applications-on-livecd-usb

Rather than getting rid of XP completely, you could partition the drive and set-up a dual boot system. The bootable version of GParted (for example) allows you to re-size existing partitions so you shouldn't need to reinstall XP. But make sure you have backups just incase! Anyway, that would get round the problem of not being able to install software (if that is the problem you're having).

http://gparted.org/livecd.php

No, everything installs fine - everything is up to date, but netflix desktop refuses the run as, from what I can gather, it needs an ext3 or ext4 filing system to run - or at least a proper filing system rather than using casper. As for your comment about dual boot, I was just thinking about that last night, but at some point I want to drop XP anyway, but I might as well keep it on for the time being.

esuhl

Geodark wrote: »

No, everything installs fine - everything is up to date, but netflix desktop refuses the run as, from what I can gather, it needs an ext3 or ext4 filing system to run - or at least a proper filing system rather than using casper.

Uh... never heard of Casper (till now!) but it looks like it's used to boot read-only live systems. That, I think, is the problem. The standard USB Ubuntu image is a live version, but if you can install the standard image instead, you will be able to install Netflix.

http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/hardy/man7/casper.7.html

Geodark

esuhl wrote: »

Uh... never heard of Casper (till now!) but it looks like it's used to boot read-only live systems. That, I think, is the problem. The standard USB Ubuntu image is a live version, but if you can install the standard image instead, you will be able to install Netflix.

http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/hardy/man7/casper.7.html

Casper-rw is a read/write version of that and it is what the live boot systems use to store data, basically is a 4gb virtual hard drive that you use to store your own data, updated apps etc. its how you can use the live USB deployments to persist user data. The issue is that it isnt ext3, or ext4 - which causes a system error in netflix-desktop. I have just swapped over the casper-rw file to a casper-rw partition to see if it is any better. But I have to agree that it is looking like I am going to have to install onto the hard drive.

on a side note... I have noticed a massive performance hit when using the casper-rw partition compared to the casper-rw file. So on those grounds alone I am going to have to install One for this weekend while the wife is away I reckon! Quite gutted as I have 3 machines I wanted to deploy this on, and wanted to get it right on the key so I knew for definite that the all had the same image.