Pipelight: Use Silverlight In Your Linux Browser To Watch Netflix, Maxdome Videos And More

<div style="text-align: justify;"><b><a href="http://fds-team.de/cms/articles/2013-08/pipelight-using-silverlight-in-linux-browsers.html">Pipelight</a> is project that brings Silverlight to any Linux browser that supports the Netscape Plugin API. Using it, you can use services that require Silverlight, such as Netflix, in native Linux web browsers like Firefox, Chrome or Midori.</b></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1113424/img/netflix-linux-chrome.png"><img alt="Netflix Google Chrome Linux" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbE_Gs7mwOXD0VcQf03yV2nZaN07v0aUSDLeZ4XQaUy16RxnOYZreoqHggtFwS-Kbgkfff4tooWL2ee7KtLl2hvdLLjI9YwWLv2fjjAs5qCuYwD5LJ6qisqbjRv6NqIFwkjdJVu4RdM1Q/s320/netflix-linux-chrome.png" /></a></div><br /><a name="more"></a><div style="text-align: justify;">Pipelight combines the effort by Erich E. Hoover (the <a href="http://www.webupd8.org/2012/11/how-to-use-netflix-in-ubuntu-through.html">Netflix Desktop</a> developer) with a new browser plugin which - unlike Netflix Desktop which requires a Windows version of Firefox to run under Wine -, lets you access services that require Microsoft Silverlight using native Linux web browsers.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This solution isn't Wine-free because the browser plugin continues to use Wine however, this shouldn't have a big impact on performance:</div><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>"Pipelight consists out of two parts: A Linux library which is loaded into the browser and a Windows program started in Wine. The Windows program, called pluginloader.exe, simply simulates a browser and loads the Silverlight DLLs. When you open a page with a Silverlight application the library will send all commands from the browser through a pipe to the Windows process and act like a bridge between your browser and Silverlight. The used pipes do not have any big impact on the speed of the rendered video since all the video and audio data is not send through the pipe. Only the initialization parameters and (sometimes) the network traffic is send through them."</i></blockquote><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">According to the Pipelight website, <b>the plugin has been confirmed to work "almost perfectly" using Microsoft Silverlight 5 for the following websites: <a href="http://www.maxdome.de/">Maxdome</a>, <a href="http://netflix.com/">Netflix</a> and <a href="https://sumo.tv2.no/">Sumo 2</a></b>.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I've tested Pipelight with Netflix, under Chrome (Ubuntu 13.10) and I can confirm it works (and the playback was smooth!), as you can see in the screenshots in this article. Update: I've also tested it with Firefox and it works, but sometimes the browser freezes, something which doesn't happen with Chrome so I recommend using Chrome / Chromium with Pipelight.</div><br /><br /><h2>Install Pipelight in Ubuntu</h2><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1113424/img/netflix-chrome-silverlight.png"><img alt="Microsoft Silverlight Google Chrome Linux" src="http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1113424/img/netflix-chrome-silverlight_thumb.png" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Before proceeding, it's strongly recommended to close your web browser. Without doing this, the plugin may fail to install or crash the browser. </b></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>1.</b> Pipelight is available in two PPAs for Ubuntu users: a <a href="https://launchpad.net/~mqchael/+archive/pipelight">stable</a> and a <a href="https://launchpad.net/~mqchael/+archive/pipelight-daily">daily</a> PPA. Firstly, try the stable PPA and if you encounter issues, also give the <a href="https://launchpad.net/~mqchael/+archive/pipelight-daily">daily PPA</a> a try.</div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>To add the Pipelight stable and Compholio PPAs and install Pipelight in Ubuntu, use the following commands:</b></div><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ehoover/compholio<br />sudo apt-add-repository ppa:mqchael/pipelight<br />sudo apt-get update<br />sudo apt-get install pipelight</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Once installed, start your browser and try <a href="http://bubblemark.com/silverlight2.html">THIS</a> test Silverlight applet. If it doesn't work, check if Silverlight is available in your browser plugin list (e.g.: you can type "about:plugins" in the address bar).</div><br />If you didn't close the browser before proceeding with the installation and Silverlight doesn't work, run the following command:<br /><pre class="linux-code"><code>rm -rf ~/.wine-pipelight/</code></pre>and then restart the browser.<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>2.</b> We're not done yet. Silverlight should be working now, but some websites such as Netflix check the browser user agent and won't allow you to play any videos since Linux isn't supported. A work-around for this is to use a browser user agent switcher:</div><br /><ul><li>Firefox: install <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/uacontrol/">UAControl</a> or <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/user-agent-overrider">User Agent Overrider</a> extensions and use one of the following user agents:</li><ul><li>Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:15.0) Gecko/20120427 Firefox/15.0a1</li><li>Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:22.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/22.0</li><li>Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:23.0) Gecko/20131011 Firefox/23.0</li></ul><li>Chrome: install <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/user-agent-switcher-for-c/djflhoibgkdhkhhcedjiklpkjnoahfmg">User Agent Switcher</a>  extension and select Windows Firefox 15 from the extension preferences.</li></ul><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">That's it! If video playback is slow or laggy, try <a href="https://answers.launchpad.net/pipelight/+faq/2356">THIS</a> work-around.</div><br /><b>Also see:</b><br /><ul><li><a href="https://answers.launchpad.net/pipelight/+faqs">Pipelight FAQ</a></li><li><a href="https://bugs.launchpad.net/pipelight">Report a bug</a></li></ul><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>For more information, Arch Linux installation instructions, source files and so on, visit the Pipelight page @ <a href="http://fds-team.de/cms/articles/2013-08/pipelight-using-silverlight-in-linux-browsers.html">fds-team.de</a>.</b></div><br /><div style="text-align: right;"><i>via Daniel Foré @ <a href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/101997050734870587600/posts/JDc2xem1rTG">G+</a></i></div>

Pipelight: Use Silverlight In Your Linux Browser To Watch Netflix, Maxdome Videos And More

Pipelight is project that brings Silverlight to any Linux browser that supports the Netscape Plugin API. Using it, you can use services tha...

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Wine 1.6 Released With ~10,000 Changes

<div style="text-align: justify;"><b>After 16 months of development, a new stable <a href="http://www.winehq.org/about/">Wine</a> version has been released: 1.6, bringing around 10,000 changes</b>, including full support for window transparency, a new Mono package for .NET application support well as a new Mac driver.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgobM4zBr6BAR58dBPgbCE93XMtF_tKRiCMHYmiEQUJ0Z16hg9ENfjH0IWaGidwqVOK5YZHURdNjPcGK6zR9QZkDr21_NtGl5u_O4q3wIe_vyB2GVZCJ0AaJmwzRNhJ9RnO-ErbDab1IA0/s1600/wine-1.6.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Wine 1.6" border="0" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgobM4zBr6BAR58dBPgbCE93XMtF_tKRiCMHYmiEQUJ0Z16hg9ENfjH0IWaGidwqVOK5YZHURdNjPcGK6zR9QZkDr21_NtGl5u_O4q3wIe_vyB2GVZCJ0AaJmwzRNhJ9RnO-ErbDab1IA0/s320/wine-1.6.png" title="Wine 1.6" width="320" /></a></div></div><br /><a name="more"></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Among the changes in the latest Wine 1.6 are:</b></div><ul style="text-align: justify;"><li>Window transparency support, including both color keying and alpha blending transparency;</li><li>All window rendering is now done on the client-side using the DIB engine (except for OpenGL rendering). This means that rendering to windows or bitmaps gives identical results;</li><li>X11 server-side font rendering is no longer supported. All fonts are rendered client-side using FreeType;</li><li>There are significant performance improvements in the DIB engine, particularly for text rendering, bitmap stretching, alpha blending, and gradients;</li><li>Sub-pixel font anti-aliasing is now supported in the DIB engine, using the system anti-aliasing configuration from FontConfig;</li><li>Raw input support for keyboard and mouse;</li><li>There is a joystick applet in the control panel, to allow configuring joysticks and testing their behavior;</li><li>Support for Randr 1.2 and 1.3; </li><li>DOSBox is tried first when running a DOS application. The Wine DOS support is only used as a fallback when DOSBox cannot be found, and will be removed in a future release;</li><li>Wine can now be configured to report the Windows version as 'Windows 8';</li><li>The Mono runtime is packaged as an MSI file, and its installation can be managed from the "Add/Remove Programs" control panel. It is automatically installed on Wine prefix updates;</li><li>The Microsoft .NET 4.0 runtime can be installed for cases where Mono is not good enough yet;</li><li>HTTPS connections use GnuTLS (or Secure Transport on Mac OS X). OpenSSL is no longer used;</li><li>The Direct3D 9Ex implementation is more complete;</li><li>Improvements to various parts of the D3DX9 and Direct3D 10 implementations;</li><li>Audio device enumeration has been improved, and multi-channel devices are better supported;</li><li>VMR-9 video rendering has been implemented;</li><li>On Linux, dynamic device management supports the UDisks2 service;</li><li>Building Wine for the ARM64 platform is now supported;</li><li>Preliminary support for building Wine for Android using the Android NDK;</li><li>A native Mac OS X driver has been implemented, for better integration with the Mac desktop environment. The full range of driver features are supported, including OpenGL, window management, clipboard, drag & drop, system tray, etc.</li></ul><b>For a complete changelog, see <a href="http://www.winehq.org/announce/1.6">THIS</a> page.</b><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">The official Wine 1.6 release announcement also mentions "<i>support for many new applications and games</i>" however, I couldn't find a list for this.</div><br /><br /><h2>Install Wine 1.6 in Ubuntu</h2><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">You can install the latest stable Wine 1.6 in Ubuntu and derivatives (Linux Mint, etc.) by using its official PPA. Add the PPA and install Wine using the following commands:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa<br />sudo apt-get update<br />sudo apt-get install wine1.6</code></pre><br /><b><a href="http://www.winehq.org/download/">Download Wine</a></b>

Wine 1.6 Released With ~10,000 Changes

After 16 months of development, a new stable Wine version has been released: 1.6, bringing around 10,000 changes , including full support f...

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Watch LOVEFiLM, Maxdome And RedBox Videos In Ubuntu Using The Netflix Desktop PPA

<div style="text-align: justify;"><b>The <a href="http://www.webupd8.org/2012/11/how-to-use-netflix-in-ubuntu-through.html">Netflix Desktop Ubuntu PPA</a> has been updated with separate packages for LOVEFiLM, RedBox and </b><b><b id="yui_3_5_1_1_1366034780450_969">Maxdome</b>, three video streaming services similar to Netflix.</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">LOVEFiLM, Maxdome and RedBox, like Netflix, are on demand TV shows and movie streaming services that require Microsoft's Silverlight plugin to play so they don't work natively under Linux, but thanks to Erich Hoover's custom WINE build, it's now possible to use all these services on Linux.</div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS-0OSMtuqmOX4Z9d3zkXlAVGy3TmLiK8f0Ev1RowJ_Xt9nRBvK7FZJ1Rc2dxq0BiwCHGosv0Zvs7m-0Q8BZkIThZQaoDbI182UU6kUi6d8QreQ1MBUV2hwgYzDQo1SN5yt0KVNTJ6sRGP/s1600/lovefilm-silverlight-ubuntu.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="LOVEFiLM silverlight ubuntu wine" border="0" height="176" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS-0OSMtuqmOX4Z9d3zkXlAVGy3TmLiK8f0Ev1RowJ_Xt9nRBvK7FZJ1Rc2dxq0BiwCHGosv0Zvs7m-0Q8BZkIThZQaoDbI182UU6kUi6d8QreQ1MBUV2hwgYzDQo1SN5yt0KVNTJ6sRGP/s320/lovefilm-silverlight-ubuntu.png" title="LOVEFiLM silverlight ubuntu wine" width="320" /></a></div><br /><a name="more"></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Installing any of the four supported service packages: Netflix, LOVEFiLM, Maxdome and RedBox will automatically download and install Firefox for WINE (Windows) as well as Microsoft Silverlight, through a package called "wine-browser-installer", so the user doesn't have to configure anything.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Once installed, launch Netflix Desktop, LOVEFiLM Desktop, Maxdome Desktop or RedBox Desktop from the menu or Dash and a full-screen Firefox (under WINE) window will be launched with only one tab (and no chrome: no menu, titlebar, tabs, etc.), for the selected service. Then, you can log in and start watching your favourite TV shows or movies, in Linux. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In the screenshot above, I've unmaximized the LOVEFiLM Desktop window. If you want to do this, you can press F11 to exit full-screen.</div><br /><br /><h2>Install Netflix, LOVEFiLM, RedBox and Maxdome Desktop in Ubuntu</h2><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>The Compholio PPA, which provides the custom WINE build along with Netflix, LOVEFiLM, </b><b>Maxdome and RedBox Desktop is available for Ubuntu Raring, Quantal, Precise, Oneiric, Natty, Maverick and Lucid. Add it using the following commands:</b></div><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ehoover/compholio<br />sudo apt-get update</code></pre><br />Then, <b>install Netflix Desktop</b> using this command:<br /><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo apt-get install netflix-desktop</code></pre><br />For <b>LOVEFiLM Desktop</b>, use:<br /><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo apt-get install lovefilm-desktop</code></pre><br />For <b>Maxdome Desktop</b>, use:<br /><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo apt-get install maxdome-desktop</code></pre><br />And finally, for <b>RedBox Desktop:</b><br /><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo apt-get install redbox-desktop</code></pre><br />More about the Netflix Desktop PPA in our initial post: <a href="http://www.webupd8.org/2012/11/how-to-use-netflix-in-ubuntu-through.html">How To Use Netflix In Ubuntu Through Wine (PPA Available)</a>.<br /><br />Report any bugs you may encounter @ <a href="https://bugs.launchpad.net/netflix-desktop">Launchpad</a>.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">For other Linux distributions, you can get the patched WINE "Compholio" from <a href="http://www.compholio.com/wine-compholio/">HERE</a>.</div>

Watch LOVEFiLM, Maxdome And RedBox Videos In Ubuntu Using The Netflix Desktop PPA

The Netflix Desktop Ubuntu PPA has been updated with separate packages for LOVEFiLM, RedBox and Maxdome , three video streaming services si...

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