
Netflix on Ubuntu Is Here - cleverjake
http://www.iheartubuntu.com/2012/11/netflix-on-ubuntu-is-here.html
======
pdenya
It's so great that this is available now. Reading the title I was hoping
Netflix had stepped up and made this work, but no. It's frustrating that it
needs to work this way, running through wine with multiple patches but at
least it works.

------
wazoox
> _./configure && make && make install_

Don't do that. Particularly don't do that on Ubuntu, this is a pretty sure way
to break something. Build a Debian package, it's not that hard. For example,
use "checkinstall", it'll build automatically one for you.

~~~
bradly
For the casual Linux user, can you explain why './configure && make && make
install' is a bad idea? Thanks.

~~~
derleth
> For the casual Linux user, can you explain why './configure && make && make
> install' is a bad idea? Thanks.

It isn't necessarily, given that the Autotools configure installs to
/usr/local by default, which is a directory tree explicitly reserved for
installation of software outside the package system.

Installing shared libraries _can_ cause problems, but that's rare because
shared libraries are versioned in Linux, as opposed to Windows, which greatly
reduces the incidence of DLL Hell. In short, a program _might_ find a shared
library that isn't the one it wants, but it very likely won't.

Similarly, installing your own executable files might cause problems for
scripts. This could be more serious, but, in practice, I've installed a newer
version of Perl outside the package system and everything works fine.

 _The biggest hassle of doing things outside the package system is the simple
fact you don't have the package managers doing the scutwork for you._ You have
to do your own dependency tracking, your own configuration, and your own
update management. There is no really easy way to _uninstall_ anything. You
quickly come to realize why we have package management in the first place, if
you really go nuts with this stuff. ;)

So. The easy advice here is "Wait for the PPA", which the post itself mentions
a few times. That will give you a nice little package, albeit not one from the
official repos. I do that with VLC and couldn't be happier. But doing this
little dance with Wine, building it yourself, is unlikely to cause problems if
you follow the instructions.

~~~
nitrogen
_Installing shared libraries can cause problems, but that's rare because
shared libraries are versioned in Linux, as opposed to Windows, which greatly
reduces the incidence of DLL Hell. In short, a program might find a shared
library that isn't the one it wants, but it very likely won't._

In fairness to Windows (and I never thought I would say that), .DLL files are
now versioned via WinSxS (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side-by-
side_assembly>).

~~~
beagle3
> In fairness to Windows (and I never thought I would say that), .DLL files
> are now versioned via WinSxS

Apparently, that's not working as well as MS hoped, either from a technical or
adopting perspective: From the same wikipedia article:

\- However, runtime libraries in Visual C++ 2010 no longer use this
technology; instead, they include the version number of a DLL in its file
name, which means that different versions of one DLL will technically be
completely different DLLs now.

\- a bug in sxs.dll causes heap corruption, leading to application crashes.
This issue is not fixed by any XP service packs. Users must manually install a
QFE (Quick Fix Engineering).

It should be noted that including the version of the library in the filename
has been a simple solution that's been used in Unix since the early '90s, when
shared libraries become fashionable. (Oh, Ultrix - how I hated not having
shared libraries when I had to use you... Luckily, you're dead now)

------
edtechdev
Netflix: ‘No Change in our plans for Linux’

[http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/09/netflix-no-change-in-
our-...](http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/09/netflix-no-change-in-our-plans-
for-linux)

~~~
imglorp
That's just Bollocks. And by bollocks I mean: another anti-consumer business
deal.

There are NF clients for PC, Android, ChromeOS, Xbox, PS3, Wii, AppleTV,
iPhone, and iPad, at least. They're using webkit and HTML5 under the client
covers[1,2]. They're a heavily invested open source company and they use and
publish tons of source code and open API's for developers [3,4].

Conclusion? They will lose some media deals if they offer a Linux port. Sucks
to be us.

1\. [http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/06/netflix-platforms-apps-
webk...](http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/06/netflix-platforms-apps-webkit-
testing.html)

2\. <http://techblog.netflix.com/search?q=webkit>

3\. <http://techblog.netflix.com/search/label/api>

4\. <https://github.com/Netflix>

~~~
chimeracoder
> They will lose some media deals if they offer a Linux port.

To be honest, no, they won't.

In fact, they'll likely lose some if they _do_. They've been able to sell some
media execs on the (false) premise that Silverlight == DRM == security ==
anti-piracy, so as long as Silverlight's DRM remains unavailable on Linux (ie,
until the end of time), they won't offer official support on Linux.

The alternatives for them would be to

a) use Silverlight, but without DRM so that Linux users can use Moonlight.

b) use Flash

c) use some other technology

(A) will never happen because they'll lose all their deals. (B) will never
happen for the same reason. (C) will never happen because it would take too
much time to roll something from scratch, and even then you have the same
problem of DRM.

So, at the end of the day, DRM once again gives users every incentive to
pirate rather than pay!

~~~
tomrod
Yep[0].

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_unintended_consequences>

------
piokoch
This post is an excellent explanation why Linux on desktops is as rare as
unicorns.

Imagine average computer user (consumer?), who see such post.

Breaking news! Yada, Yada. And then

./configure && make && sudo make install

From the PR point of view it would be better if such Netflix port was never
done, such news would never be written.

Someone potentially interested in installing Ubuntu would come accross such
news and I bet this person would never look again at Ubuntu or any other
Linux.

~~~
reidrac
"Get Firefox and Microsoft Silverlight working in WINE."

IMHO that's the stinky part of it. Saying "Netflix on Ubuntu is Here" is
misleading when you're actually using a special version of a compatibility
layer* to run the Windows version.

That's far from Netflix supporting Linux.

* that's what the compiling part is about, if you read the post there's a notice about packages being released soon.

EDIT: WINE is not an emulator.

~~~
lucian1900
I think it's because the person publishing this is excited for being able to
finally watch the Netflix they pay a subscription for on their preferred OS.

------
jlgreco
I thought the idea behind Netflix using Silverlight _(instead of flash, which
would presumably allow Netflix to normally work in Linux, like youtube or
amazon instant video)_ was that Silverlight had super-duper DRM stuff that did
nonsense with TPM.

If it works with WINE, I am guessing the situation is not quite that simple?

~~~
zanny
Netflix didn't use Silverlight because it had extremely good DRM, but because
nobody used it nobody had taken the time to reverse engineer it so getting the
raw video files out of Netflix would be harder.

Most computers don't have TPMs but Netflix runs on any Windows OS that has
Silverlight. In the end, it is still software using the Win32 API, it just
required implementing some Microsoft-specific functionality they had going on.

I do wonder how the Netflix apps not on Microsoft platforms work though. The
Android, iOS, and game console versions mainly.

~~~
derleth
> software using the Win32 API

Which is all Wine provides, hence the name: Wine Is Not an Emulator.

(Alternately, I guess you could insist that glibc is a POSIX emulator on top
of the OS kernel.)

(My point? All of a sudden I need a point? When did that happen?)

~~~
laumars
Technically WINE provides more than just Win32 APIs, but essentially you're
right. WINE is more a compatibility layer / wrapper for PEs than an emulator.

In fact, I often make the container distinction: you have containers (Zones /
Jails / OpenVZ) and you have virtual machines (VMWare / Vbox / Qemu / etc).
WINE falls more into the containers category because it runs Windows PE
natively on the host but in a sandboxed environment (and in an approximate
sense of the term, chrooted) but with hooks that go between the host and
client.

But, like with WINE, many lump containers into the virtualisation pigeon-hole
as the full hardware emulation suites even though you're not actually
emulating any hardware with containers.

------
ecubed
No, no its not. Netflix works with WINE. When you install Ubuntu, and Netflix
works out of the box, then Netflix on Ubuntu will be here.

------
Sami_Lehtinen
No! Silverlight & WINE? Horrible! I would have preferred pure HTML5 solution.
Btw. I just cancelled my Netflix account a few months ago and told them to
have fun with their MS Silverlight.

~~~
zanny
In Netflixes defence, they are dealing with an intrenched, politically
influential, and absurdly powerful media sector that is used to monopolistic
business and bleeding customers dry on their terms. Any ground netflix takes
is given hesitantly, and their use of Silverlight was probably a mandate by
some suits who thought Flash was too vulnerable to people taking their
precious ones and zeros and saving them outside the app.

~~~
kokey
Yup, Lovefilm was also forced to switch to Silverlight. The content providers
haven't learned anything from the mistakes of the music industry. This is
going to end badly for them.

~~~
nollidge
> This is going to end badly for them.

I doubt it. They'll continue to thrive because enough people will jump through
their hoops. and they'll give up juuuuust enough ground to keep people
agreeable.

~~~
MichaelGG
How'd that work out with music and books? Amazon and iTunes became powerful
players _because_ the DRM created lockin and they ended up controlling the
customers. Publishers are stuck now that they gave control to Amazon and
helped Kindle become a proprietary success.

The video producers seem to be running along, handing over the same control to
folks like Apple and Microsoft. Not a good strategy long-term, when they want
to make DRM go away and sell to any old platform. By then, people will be
locked in via their collections on iTunes or whatnot.

------
stenius
for about 10 seconds I was thinking about restarting my Netflix sub. Then I
read part of the article and found it wasn't a native solution or Netflix who
was stepping up.

~~~
w1ntermute
Their loss. There's certainly no dearth of torrent clients for Linux.

------
sspiff
I wouldn't call building a patched version of WINE to run the Windows version
"working on Ubuntu", sadly.

~~~
chimeracoder
I would - as someone who owns zero Windows machines, this means that I can
actually use Netflix as opposed to - well, not.

Amusingly, this was literally _the last thing_ that I still wasn't able to do
on Linux that I wanted to - GNU/Linux is a fully capable OS, but DRM is quite
a nuisance.

~~~
sspiff
There are two things I miss on Linux: my collection of games and half of my
battery life. I do virtually everything on Linux, but when on the road or in
the mood for a game, well, there's not much of a choice.

------
dmritard96
My understanding is that netflix uses silverlight for DRM reasons. What I
don't understand though is how this drm is effective or why there aren't
popular tools (I am guess there actually are tools though) that circumvent
this DRM. Fundamentally, there is a buffer for your screen where the content
is being written with a 4 bytes or so per pixel right? Presumably there is
something similar with audio? To me it seems like the best way to avoid all of
this DRM garbage is to make effective ripping programs. If you did it right
you could even use it as a dvr and then watch your media offline locally.

~~~
byuu
Even if you could rip at the raw 24bpp RGB output and streaming audio, you are
talking 356MByte/s (20GByte/m) of data for 1080p. People want the original
streams because they have already been nicely compressed.

Now sure, you can then recompress this stream, if your CPU is able to compress
it in real time as Netflix sends it to you. You'll double your compression
artifacts, and any dropped frames compensating for your CPU speed or bandwidth
will be lost forever. The end result will probably be between VHS and camrip
in terms of quality.

If someone really wants a rip, it's easier to get the decrypted form from a
DVD or Bluray. Plenty of people have already done the work packaging most
stuff like this anyway.

------
jlarocco
Or you can sign up for Amazon Prime and use their streaming service, which
works on Linux without jumping through hoops.

If you're willing to pay for individual movies/shows (in addition to the $79 a
year), Prime even has a much better selection than Netflix.

~~~
paulgb
Only if you're American. Netflix works in a number of other countries.

~~~
smackfu
With varying amounts of content.

------
gengstrand
You can stream video on Ubuntu on Hulu right now without having to set up some
custom wine/silverlight anything. Just point your web browser to Hulu and
start watching.

------
bgilroy26
Is it possible to run the netflix app in an android emulator on an average
machine?

------
QuarkSpark
It's a pity it doesn't work for 64-bit systems

------
y4m4
This is awesome!

------
derleth
Here's how you build Wine on a 64-bit system:

<http://wiki.winehq.org/WineOn64bit>

On Ubuntu it involves chroot, because Wine is apparently fundamentally
dependent on a 32-bit architecture. Probably related to it implementing the
Win32 API.

~~~
donniezazen
I have decided to hold on for them to create PPA.

------
goggles99
I am surprised that there is no Netflix for Boxee/Android reverse engineering
taking place. Both Linux devices with fully working Netflix clients and no
WINE.

~~~
ajasmin
It may not be legal to copy the code from these devices onto your Ubuntu PC or
redistribute it on the Internet.

Both Firefox and Silverlight are available for download.

~~~
goggles99
I did not suggest copying code (the code that I am referring to is not open
source anyway), I suggested reverse engineering.

------
linpythio
Multimedia and game are linux's weakness.

------
ksikka
I'm sure linux users are going to pay 8$ a month to watch old videos when they
can just...

Netflix is more for the Windows and Mac kind anyway. I can see why they are
not too concerned about the market of linux users their missing out on.

~~~
imglorp
I pay for Netflix because I feel it's an okay value to get a few things I like
to watch. I don't mind paying a reasonable price for media, but in exchange I
want it when I want, on the device I want. I don't blame NF here, I blame the
content holders.

In addition to restricting what I watch, the content holders are also only
selling half to NF. Most series they'll sell a few seasons and reserve the
rest locked up, hoping you'll buy a disk from them. Suck.

