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How To Install and Run Netflix on Fedora Using Pipelight

In an earlier post we covered how to install Netflix on Ubuntu, so know it is time to install it on Fedora, only fair, right?
First we need to install Pipelight and Wine and their specific dependencies. Pipelight is a special browser plugin which allows one to use windows only plugins inside Linux browsers. Currently focusing on Silverlight, Flash, Shockwave and the Unity Webplayer.

So first we will need to install a few prerequisites.

First of all you need to install the Microsoft core fonts which are not part of the normal repositories. They are required to get Silverlight working otherwise the plugin may simply fail to start without any error output.

$ sudo yum install cabextract
$ sudo rpm -i http://sourceforge.net/projects/mscorefonts2/files/rpms/msttcore-fonts-installer-2.6-1.noarch.rpm

Now let’s add add the repository and install Pipelight which can achieved by executing (there are also Fedora 18 and Fedora 20 packages, just replace Fedora_19 with Fedora_18 or Fedora_20). If you do not have Wine installed, Pipelight will install it as a dependency.

$ sudo wget http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/DarkPlayer:/Pipelight/Fedora_19/home:DarkPlayer:Pipelight.repo -O /etc/yum.repos.d/pipelight.repo
$ sudo yum install pipelight

After the installation all plugins are disabled and you must manually enable those you want to use. To enable a plugin you can use the pipelight-plugin script as shown in the following line with Silverlight:

$ sudo pipelight-plugin --enable silverlight

If you already have Wine installed, you need to upgrade your packages, so that you will get our Wine version with all needed patches.

Take a look at the post installation steps for more information about enabling and disabling plugins. The installation of Silverlight (or any other plugin you have selected) takes place when you start your browser the next time. Please note that you will need to install a user agent switcher for most plugins/pages to get them working.

One problem you may come across is that Fedora uses SELinux and browsers are often not allowed to execute external programs which is required for Pipelight to work. For Firefox you can solve this issue by disabling the unconfined_mozilla_plugin_transition check via

$ sudo setsebool -P unconfined_mozilla_plugin_transition 0

Other Browser might require additional exceptions and you will need to take a look at the SELinux log if Pipelight does not work as expected.

Install Wine

$ sudo yum install wine

Step no 2:

Netflix uses browser User Agent (UA) string to identify what operating system & browser a user is using. Since Linux is not supported natively by Netflix, browser’s UA string has to be modified before connecting to Netflix.

For Firefox users:

Download either of these addons to change the UA string.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/uacontrol/

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/user-agent-overrider/

Use UA string like

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

For Chrome/Chromium users:

Download this extension.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/user-agent-switcher-for-c/djflhoibgkdhkhhcedjiklpkjnoahfmg

Change UA to Windows Firefox 15. If it doesn’t work, you can manually change UA by typing

chromium –user-agent=”Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:15.0) Gecko/20120427 Firefox/15.0a1?

These steps will allow an Linux user to stream Netflix on her/his browser.

And that should be all you need. Open your browser and got to Netflix and enjoy!

3 Responses to “How To Install and Run Netflix on Fedora Using Pipelight”

  1. Tim says:

    Awesome. Thanks for taking the time to put this together.

  2. zeh says:

    Yeah, thanks. Work 100%!!!!

  3. ME6 says:

    Awesome, thanks so much for this! I’m a Netflix junkie, but brand new to Linux and I was easily able to follow this and it worked like a charm. Thanks!

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