Netflix on Linux Mint 14

Netflix uses Microsoft Silverlight in their web version which makes it impossible to watch Netflix on Linux machines since no native client is available. The Pipelight project has released a plugin that emulates Silverlight using the Netscape Plugin API and wine. So all browsers supporting the Netscape Plugin API like Firefox and Chrome should be able to use this trick.

This is tested on my Linux Mint 14 HTPC with Chrome and works like a charm. It is even faster then the earlier Linux Desktop Netflix client that was available as apt-get install. 

If you have an earlier version of Pipelight first remove it

sudo apt-get remove pipelight

Install the plugin and enable it

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ehoover/compholio

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:mqchael/pipelight

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install pipelight-multi

sudo pipelight-plugin --enable silverlight

That should be it. But the Netflix web site has a check that your browser is a Windows based browser. Emulate this by installing a plugin that enables you to choose which user agent your browser should mimick. I use the User Agent Shifter for Chrome.

If you use this one, switch to Windows Firefox 15 or similar in the menu.

Pipelight also supports Adobe Flash, so if you have need for that, install it via

pipelight-plugin --enable flash