Netflix, Inc. (NFLX) Finally Available for Linux Users, Sans Hacks

Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) now officially supports Linux, whose small but passionate user base have been clamoring for an easy way to watch videos from the streaming service on their operating system. As Engadget reported, Paul Adolph, a Senior Software Engineer at Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) announced the new compatibility with Linux in a posting to Ubuntu developers on Thursday.

As the posting made mention of, users would no longer need to hack their user-agent list to run Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX). By doing so on a beta or developer version of the Chrome browser, it was possible to enable video playback, but it required a complicated process that involved multiple programs and settings tinkering to pull it off. Now Linux users with a stable version of Chrome 14.02 and a NSS (Network Security Services) version of 3.16.2 or higher should be able to watch videos without any problems.

Linux users can thank the switch to HTML5 for video playback by Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) for the service now being officially available for the OS, which has about a 1.75% share of the desktop OS market. Until recently, Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) had used Silverlight as their video playback method, support for which was not available on Linux.

Recently however they made the switch to HTML5, with one of the primary reasons being that it would offer greater protection against video downloading in the future. Their HTML5 Premium Video extension (also called Encrypted Media Extensions) will provide DRM support that will make it much more difficult for users to download and save the content Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) streams to them, thus preventing the uploading of that content to video sites.

Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX)’s HTML5 has made a slow roll-out across various OS’s and browsers as testing is completed on it. It currently works in Chrome OS, with Android and Roku, as well as on Windows 8.1 using Windows Explorer 11, and Safari for Yosemite OS X.

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