How To Run Netflix in Ubuntu 13.04

I really love my wife! The other day she broke down and let me wipe out the install of Windows 8 on her laptop, and let me replace it with Lubuntu Linux. It's lighter, has better performance and it is not Microsoft which is a part of the NSA's PRISM program.

Well, her only stipulations were that it must play CD's and DVD's, she had to be able to surf the web easily like she did in Windows, and she had to be able to watch Netflix.

All of them were easy enough except Netflix. That's because Netflix is the only company in the world I think that built their web-based application on the obsolete Silverlight by Microsoft, and it just doesn't want to run on Linux.

Well, I got it to work, but you have to install a third party package called Netflix-Desktop.

To install it run the following from the terminal:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ehoover/compholio
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install netflix-desktop

After that it will create a nice little Netflix-Desktop icon in your Sound & Video menu, at least that is where it created mine in Lubuntu. You can also launch it from the terminal by running netflix-desktop.


After I installed it and showed it to my wife she was happy as a clam, and so was I because I got rid of one more Windows PC from my life! Woot!