It may be odd to know that while Netflix has become very popular, it isn’t actually available on Linux. To deal with this situation, a developer has somehow figured out a way to make things finally work between them. Erich Hoover claims that the problem can be solved by getting Microsoft Silverlight and Firefox working in WINE which is not as easy as it seems. In order to put all the pieces working, you have to be able to run a customized version of WINE which has been patched in various places. The whole process may be a little complicated and would require several steps but in the end, everything works smoothly especially on Ubuntu’s 32-bit version. The 64-bit version is also compatible though the steps involved would be much trickier.
Wine is a type of software application that is both free and open source. It’s actually an acronym which means WINdows Emulator. Later on, this was changed and now the acronym stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator. Wine is the brainchild of Bob Amstadt and Eric Youngdale who have thought of finding a way to run Windows apps on Linux. Wine causes Linux to be more useful allowing millions of its users to make that switch thereby increasing the market share of Linux. This makes Linux more attractive to developers especially those inclined with the commercial aspect and the community.
The first thing that has to be done is to download the latest Wine source code and make its compilation. Through an open terminal window, you have to run certain commands. Then, you would need a different set of commands and patch them. Bear in mind that the speed in doing all these commands depends on whether your computer is old or new. With newer computers, the process is absolutely faster. More commands are then needed to be run. Next, you’re ready to install Firefox and Silverlight. Considering that the version of Firefox is not that relevant and Silverlight 5 is not feasible just yet, Silverlight 4 is then recommended. After this step, everything should already fall in place. For your initial movie viewing, you have to click “Enable” for enabling the DRM component. Now, you can visit the Netflix website and start playing something.
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