It's been announced that Netflix plans to ditch Silverlight and go HTML5 with their video player. But until such a time rises, Linux users will have some difficulty using Netflix.

One solution is to run Windows inside a virtual machine. This could work if your system is sufficient enough, but it would be a tremendous waste on memory. After all, you are running another operating system inside Linux, and then a browser, and then Silverlight on top of that. Seems a bit heavy-loaded just to simply watch Netflix, don't you think?

Another solution, probably the most common, is the netflix-desktop package available on Ubuntu. This actually works pretty well but it has one major drawback: You are forced to run an instance of a Windows Firefox runnable under Wine.

So how did I resolve this? Well, after trial and error for weeks on end, I stumbled across an elegant solution, which I have adapted for Ubuntu. Here, let me tell you.

Step 1. Installing Pipelight

First, you're going to want to install Pipelight. This is an open-source alternative to Silverlight, which also supports other plugins such as Flash and the Unity web player.

Open up a terminal and run these commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pipelight/stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install --install-recommends pipelight-multi

Now, I must point something out. During the installation of this package, it will install the ttf-mscorefonts-installer package. I found that this breaks fonts on other webpages like Facebook which changes to use Verdana. It will override the better-looking stock Linux sans-serif fonts.

If you do not want this to happen, we are fortunate here. During the installation of ttf-mscorefonts-installer, it will prompt you to accept a EULA. You can decline this EULA and the installation of the fonts package will cancel, and the installation of Pipelight will still continue on successfully. This will stop fonts breaking!

Step 2. Enabling Silverlight

Next, you're going to want to enable Silverlight in Pipelight. This will allow you to view Silverlight plugins in your browser.

So, in the terminal, run these commands:

sudo pipelight-plugin --update
sudo pipelight-plugin --enable silverlight

When prompted, hit the Y key to accept the licenses required for installation.

Step 3. User-Agent Spoofing

Pipelight is installed, but it still won't work with Netflix. This is because Netflix runs something called a user-agent check which confirms you are using a supported browser and operating system before streaming. If you are using Firefox or Chrome, we can work around this.

For Chrome / Chromium

Download and install this extension. Once it's installed, change the user agent to Windows Firefox 15. Or go into the Settings and add the custom string:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:15.0) Gecko/20120427 Firefox/15.0a1

For Firefox

Download and install this or this add-on. Once it's installed, use the user agent string:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:15.0) Gecko/20120427 Firefox/15.0a1

or, if that doesn't work:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:23.0) Gecko/20131011 Firefox/23.0

Step 4. Netflix

You can now load Netflix and watch it in your preferred browser. Now go. Enjoy. Take advantage of your Netflix membership.

Step 5. A/V Sync Compensation

To adjust A/V sync, first load a Netflix movie. Then hold down the Shift + Alt, and left click anywhere on the movie. A diagnostics menu should appear and A/V Sync Compensation should be listed on the bottom. Load this, and adjust the compensation to your needs.