Netflix Comes To Linux Via Silverlight On Patched Wine

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Netflix Comes To Linux Via Silverlight On Patched Wine

Netflix video streaming is now available on Linux through the use of Wine. When running a specially patched version of Wine in conjunction with the Microsoft Windows versions of Firefox and Microsoft Silverlight, Netflix can now do Internet video streaming to the Linux desktop...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTIyOTc

[Kivada]

Too bad Firefox is on 16.0.2 now and Silverlight is crap...

Wont be too many takers with the way they want to do this.

[BwackNinja]

Given that Firefox uses out of process plugins, Silverlight is an NPAPI plugin, and nspluginwrapper can allow browsers to use plugins of a different architecture, is it feasible for someone to code a plugin wrapper that allows Windows-dependent browser plugins to be run through wine but interact with the native Firefox? What would the technical hurdles be in doing so? The biggest obstacle I can think of is that wine isn't made to be able to work like that, but designs might be able to work around that, like having a fake browser running in wine that forwards the data over a socket to be received by a native NPAPI plugin listening on that socket.

Thoughts?

[liam]

Phoronix: Netflix Comes To Linux Via Silverlight On Patched Wine

Netflix video streaming is now available on Linux through the use of Wine. When running a specially patched version of Wine in conjunction with the Microsoft Windows versions of Firefox and Microsoft Silverlight, Netflix can now do Internet video streaming to the Linux desktop...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTIyOTc

Obviously they aren't tied too closely with silverlight otherwise they wouldn't offer Netflix on android.
This is really assholey of them.

[garegin]

Obviously they aren't tied too closely with silverlight otherwise they wouldn't offer Netflix on android.
This is really assholey of them.

they aren't being assholey. they don't write software for charity. if it made dollars, they would do it. they aren't just gonna support it because of GNU morality. not to mention that linux support is a nightmare of different distros with different versions of the same upstream software. it is much harder to track bugs for say debian kde vs. arch with lxde. they have different libraries with different versions of pulseaudio, gtk+, qt4, glibc, gcc, x.org, mesa. i remember avast having different bugs on different versions of ubuntu, but working fine in rhel and debian.

[staalmannen]

Obviously they aren't tied too closely with silverlight otherwise they wouldn't offer Netflix on android.
This is really assholey of them.

Yeah. I wonder what happened with the Dalvik VM for native linux. There was some work with Dalvik running on top on some sort of Qt back end. Another thing worked on a few years ago was a Dalvik VM for ubuntu.

I have not heard anything about those programs lately. Those would otherwise be perfect for this kind of stuff, and one would only need to pull out the apk from the phone to use it.

EDIT: back then, there were issues with Android-specific kernel stuff and Binder. I guess those things should be less of an issue now since the Android linux fork and Linus' branch have a smaller delta nowadays.
some interesting links...
http://www.milk.com/kodebase/dalvik-...ing-guide.html
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/02/a...be-even-ubuntu
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/...run-on-ubuntu/

[snadrus]

Yeah. I wonder what happened with the Dalvik VM for native linux. There was some work with Dalvik running on top on some sort of Qt back end. Another thing worked on a few years ago was a Dalvik VM for ubuntu.

I have not heard anything about those programs lately. Those would otherwise be perfect for this kind of stuff, and one would only need to pull out the apk from the phone to use it.

Dalvik VM works on native Linux now for ARM and x86 (PCs), but the problem is the libraries on top. Hardware is locked by either [Direct-Rendering-Manager for X11, sound by PulseAudio, etc] OR [SurfaceFlinger, AudioFlinger, etc]. Until one side (Linux userspace) supports enough of the other's (Android Libs) APIs, APKs won't work in a Linux userspace. Even if they did, it would be a weird mismatch (like, where does the notification bar go?).

To push this along, I'd start with finding something that could provide the SurfaceFlinger and input APIs.

[asdx]

Don't need it, TPB serves my needs very well.

[Danniello]

Hmmm... Silverlight with DRM on Linux...
DRM has been made to be sure that software/hardware is "legit" and "record" is not possible (in fact of course it is possible but it is harder than without DRM). Starting Silverlight with DRM via Wine it is DRM bypass....

Unfortunately probably Microsoft/Netflix will update their software to avoid such DRM flow...

[Chewi]

Given that Firefox uses out of process plugins, Silverlight is an NPAPI plugin, and nspluginwrapper can allow browsers to use plugins of a different architecture, is it feasible for someone to code a plugin wrapper that allows Windows-dependent browser plugins to be run through wine but interact with the native Firefox? What would the technical hurdles be in doing so? The biggest obstacle I can think of is that wine isn't made to be able to work like that, but designs might be able to work around that, like having a fake browser running in wine that forwards the data over a socket to be received by a native NPAPI plugin listening on that socket.

Thoughts?

It's certainly been done before by CrossOver. I was wondering the same thing but I don't know whether the DRM would get in the way.