Unix and Linux → Re: Ubuntu That Looks Like Windows: Are We There Yet?

But it is a prime example as to why Linux isn't ready for mainstream desktop use. A new linux user that has a netflix account would expect to have to install something silver-light-ish from the main repository, when the need arises, more or less like Windows will direct you to a silverlight download when you do not have it installed.

Instead, when in Mint 16 you decide to search for silverlight, nothing comes up. So you take to Google. Not knowing the name pipelight, you may search for something like Silverlight for Linux. The first page of searches does not mention ANYTHING about something called "pipelight", but instead shows pages referring to Moonlight, which for many years was indeed a work-in-progress to come up with a Silverlight for Linux, but has since been abandoned.

So you read around for a while, and on a 2nd page of search you come across 2 links:

»www.webupd8.org/2013/08/ ··· nux.html
»how-to.wikia.com/wiki/Ho ··· in_Linux

The first link shows how to install pipelight.
The second link shows other alternatives, mostly going the Wine route or the route of using a Virtualbox VM to show video.

So since you want a native Linux solution, you go the first route: installing pipelight.

Quite quickly, you are confronted with some command line work. Now for me that is not a problem, I don't mind the command line, and have no problem working with it. But for the generation that started using computers for the first time when Windows 95 was the main OS.... command line feels unfamiliar. And strange.

But allright! Since I just did a fresh Mint 16 install on this laptop, AND I have a Netflix account, I will give this a try.

First thing I am noticing during the install is that it will add 216 MB to my diskspace. That seems a lot, but I am sure there is a lot of dependencies that needs to be downloaded that I may not have gotten with my rather fresh Mint 16 install. Among others, there is a Microsoft font it needs to install, and I need to accept their EULA etc. Thats all fine. I am noticing however, it is actually downloading windows type .exe files from the corefont website. That reminds me back in the day when you had to extrace a NDIS driver from a executable to get the firmware for some linksys wireless card I used way back when!

(Will edit this post as I now need to close my browser)

After restarting the browser, the little "test" they linked to in the article above, works..... But Netflix does not. It refuses, and just tells me I am not running a supported platform, and it cannot play video. I need to run Windows or MacOS... or, surprisingly, Chrome OS, which IS linux based if I remember correctly, but of course Google uses their own proprietary code, and Google is a company that actually bothered to BUY licensing for Silverlight, which might explain why it is supported.

The fix, of course, is easy and supplied in the article: We need to lie to Linux about our browser and OS version, and several plugins are available to do just that. After installing this plugin, and telling Firefox to lie, and saying it is running Windows with Firefox 26, it is time to try it.

So, I went for some SD content.... I have been watching Deepspace 9 again, so once I logged on Netflix and I selected my profile, I just play the next episode. The performance however.... is horrible. The play stutters, and it isn't the kind that is because of buffering. Nor should it, I have a 100 Mbps connection here, and it buffers HD streams to my TV without problems..... ever. This though, seems rather uncomortable. The sound stutters too every so often.

Is it the hardware? I think not, it is a 3 year old laptop, core 2 duo, 4 GB of RAM, and it plays HD video from other sources without issue.

OKay lets try something HD.

I select Torchwood. And low and behold...... "The Silverlight plugin has crashed". Great, reload the page to try again.... not promising so far. Actually, quite the opposite, this is dismal and quite embarrassing if you wanted to sell Linux to a Netflix watcher.

Torchwood now starts, and it is in HD. It starts pretty fast, which I think is because of my fast internet connection. Playback however, is horrendous, like it has 5 frames per second. Okay, I decide to fast forward to the 18 minute mark. Oh great, the silverlight plugin crashed again, please reload......

After reload it starts play again, and it did remember where I was. But that is not because of silverlight, but in spite of it. Netflix just saves that. In Torchwood in the meantime, one of the characters comes through a door. The door opens with what seems 3 to 5 fps..... Its horrendous.

So conclusion: Yes, it is possible to get pipelight to work. But it is horribly unstable on a brand new Mint 16 installation, on a core 2 duo laptop with 4 GB, connected to a 100 Mbps internet connection that plays full HD on my TV every time of the day without problems, on a media center PC that is actually LESS in specs.

So although the poster above me might claim: "oh its easy, it worked here", the reality is that it doesn't for everyone. It certainly didn't for me. When 2 people are in a room and barely move and just speak.... it seems to work. But if they start running, slamming doors, fight, or do anything action-wise, it just becomes unwatchable.

And for the record: This VERY laptop was a media center for my 2nd TV, and played 1080p video on my other PC without a HITCH using a Windows 7 install. I since then put an apple TV in that room, and reclaimed this laptop. So I am 100% sure it is not the hardware. It is the linux way of implementing/using Silverlight, and it just isn't ready for the average user that wants to use things like Netflix.

It is certainly keeping me from installing Linux my main media center PC in the living room, it will stay on Windows 7.

Conclusion in the end: NO.

perhaps you misinterpreted the meaning of my post.
i have been messing with *nix for about 12 years. i started when i was about 15 messing around with red-hat right about the time that the fedora project came to fruition. i've run *nix as my daily driver since then, though for work i do have to use a windows vm to interoperate with the working class. i don't claim to be a linux expert -- but i feel very comfortable messing with the guts of linux and can make things (usually) work.

my post was to show that -- yes, this does work and if you are comfortable with the concept of user agents, etc -- then this is a pretty easy install, especially in ubuntu.

yes -- the performance isn't as great as native windows/mac -- because *nix has to have several layers of abstraction to get the silverlight plugin working. would i run this on an htpc -- probably not. however -- when i have to travel with my work pc -- it will suffice for simple streaming to kill time.

q.

That is a user issue. I guarantee you that if you let a user that DOES do the above work with a Linux computer, he/she will have made a mess out of your Linux install as well. No you don't have toolbars that come with freeware programs, but if you just start installing stuff from the repositories, you will eventually get a pretty cluttered system, and in some cases, one program can break another because the dependencies have changed.

Say what you will, but A current Windows 7 installation (or Windows 8) can pretty much run all Windows software released in the last 15 or so years. If you have programs that require different versions of Visual Basic, C++, DirectX, etc.... they will run perfectly fine alongside programs that require newer versions of those. Most programs released in say 2000, will run on the same Windows as a program released in 2014.

In Linux, you are going to be in dependency HELL if you want to do this.... no matter how much love an OLD program, if it can't work with newer C++ libraries, you are going to have a problem with newer software that DOES need those newer libraries.

Personally, I run Linux Mint 16 (I switched to Mint when Ubuntu changed its GUI) on 2 computers, MacOS on my wife's Macbook, and Windows 7, Windows 8 on 2 more computers, so I take the best of all worlds, and combine them.

I love this laptop, Linux Mint works great, but I am under no illusions that Linux is just not ready for mainstream use, and problems like the ones with Netflix, are real.

The biggest strenght of Linux, is also its major weakness: Everyone can participate and develop for Linux, but there is also no authority. There are roughly 20 different types of distributions, and from those 20, several hundred forks have been created. The most well known ones are probably the ones based on Debian, but there is also based on Redhat, Mandriva, Gentoo, etc, etc..... in one distro you can install a .deb, in another a .rpm, and in yet another you will have to compile stuff from scratch most of the time, etc, etc.... there is NO uniformity.

So the next time you complain about Linux not being supported by such and so, THIS is why. A company can't possibly be expected to support not only the main distributions, but also the hundreds of forks that are available. Even Linus Torvalds has commented on this..... it has gotten a little TOO complex. What Linux should one choose? Yeah if you just do some email and webbrowsing, any might do.... but soon you may find out that program A is only available through Fedora based Distro's, and program B only is available through Debian based, and if you want to run both program A and B on the same computer, you are going to have to compile ONE of those from scratch with the sourcecode, and that brings a lot of it's own headaches with it.

Distrowatch.com has a top 100 of distributions, but there are many many more..... granted, some are the same fork (Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Lubuntu/Xubuntu etc), but even within those the differences are big enough to warrant their own spot in the listings.

Linux has gotten too complex. And after more then 20 years of development, it is still not close to really replace the desktop for the little-more-then-average user. And for the record, yes I am typing this from my laptop running Linux.

I think there's some fairness in that comment, but I also think that Windows fosters bad computing habits, and by that I mean the idea that a single computer should be all things to all people.

Linux doesn't foster this, and as a result your everyday computer user either views it a complicated or limited, when in fact Windows is just poor at doing lots of things, versus your typical Linux setup which is much more focused on a particular set of tasks.

EQ