Finally Running Netflix On Linux

For years users of Linux have been finding workarounds to get Netflix running on Linux, primarily by running Windows in a virtual machine and then Netflix within that virtual machine. The reason for this is that Netflix will only run with DRM support, and although Linux has created projects that work with Silverlight content they could not recreate/ bypass the DRM.

Recently there has been a major advancement. WINE, the software used to run Windows software within Linux, has a few  patches that allow it to run Netflix on Linux systems. It’s not perfect yet, it’s a little choppy, but you can run Netflix straight from your Linux OS without having to resort to resource heavy virtual machines.

To get started just run the following commands in your terminal:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ehoover/compholio

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install netflix-desktop

Launch netflix-desktop and enjoy! It’s really that simple. I’ve been watching Netflix on Linux Ubuntu 12.10.

A tip: if your video is choppy try playing it in full screen, this seems to improve performance.

With Steam coming to Linux and now a working Netflix player I think a lot of users will be taking a serious look at desktop Linux.

Donate to WINE so we can see continued improvements to an incredible project: http://www.winehq.org/donate/

Note: This is not a supported method for playing Netflix. But it works!