Introduction

Many websites rely on Flash to play videos and use DRM to restrict the content to certain audiences. TV channels in particular are more and more numerous to offer REPLAY and VOD services for free but serve them with DRM.

May 21, 2014  Linux Mint Forum to the rescue, once again. I just followed the link and the steps, including using the Tab key to accept the user agreement, and now can watch Redbox streaming videos on my Cinnamon desktop. Thank you, xenopeek, and thank you, OP, for. How To Install Microsoft Silverlight On Ubuntu. To install Microsoft Silverlight on Ubuntu, do the following: To get Pipelight working we’re going to need to install two different PPAs. To enable these PPAs, we need to enter some terminal commands. Search for ‘terminal’ in the Unity dash and open it. I have used the method I suggested to install successfully wine-pipelight on Ubuntu 12.04, 14.04 and Mint 17 so I know it works. I never used the Netflix Desktop software so don't know how well that will work.

The problem is that DRM support is not available in Linux versions of Flash (blame Adobe and Google all you want, it doesn't look like it's likely to change).

Overview of possible solutions

For a majority of websites, adding HAL support (required for DRM) won't help (and it's already done in LMDE 2 Betsy and in Linux Mint since version 17.2 Rafaela).

Along with Adobe, Google is part of the problem: They're the exclusive distributor of new versions of Flash on Linux, they only support their own browsers, the semi-open Chromium less so than the proprietary Chrome. In case you were ready to swallow your pride and to switch to Chrome for that particular reason, think again though... the only Linux platform they include DRM support for is Android, so that won't help either.

Pipelight is like a wrapper which makes your browser use Windows plugins. So with pipelight, you can run Firefox with the Windows Flash plugin... and IT WORKS! :) It's quite messy though... and I don't recommend you doing that. With pipelight you start including Windows layers beneath something you use every day.. not only that but it can mess up Webkit as well (that's used among other things by your login screen, your screensaver, other applications).

Rather than installing pipelight and having your OS use a Window version of Flash, we recommend installing a Windows version of Firefox. That way, your Linux system stays clean, it uses its own Linux version of Flash and Linux plugins, and in and only in that Windows version of Firefox is the Windows version of Flash used.

Installing WINE to run Windows programs

The first thing to do is to install WINE with the following command:

apt install wine --install-recommends

With this done, you're now able to run Windows .exe files and programs.

Installing the Windows version of Firefox

Visit the following link:

How To Install Silverlight Linux Mint 17 Download

Find your language and download the Windows version.

Once it's downloaded, go to your download directory and double-click on it (or right-click -> Open With... and select 'wine') and install it like you would in Windows (i.e. keep clicking NEXT without reading anything).

Once installed, you now have two versions of Firefox:

• Your Linux version, in 'Menu -> Internet -> Firefox'
• Your Windows version, in 'Menu -> Wine -> Firefox'

Installing the Windows version of Flash

For some reason, installing Flash from within the Windows version of Firefox doesn't seem to work well. So instead, we install it directly just like we installed Firefox itself.

Visit the following link with your Linux version of Firefox:

Select 'Windows 7' and the 'Firefox' 'NPAPI' version.

Once it's downloaded, go to your download directory and double-click on it (or right-click -> Open With... and select 'wine') and install it like you would in Windows (i.e. keep clicking NEXT without reading anything).

Once installed, your Windows version of Firefox should now have Flash, and since it's the Windows version of Flash, you can use it to browse your favorite video websites (even though they're evil to use locked-in DRM content right?) :)

Many thanks

How To Install Silverlight Linux Mint 17

Some guys worked really hard on extracting the binary version of Flash from Android... and it works as well. I don't think that's a solution, especially long-term, but I'd like to thank them for trying to solve this problem.

Many thanks to the Wine developers for saving the day. It feels really weird to have to install Windows versions of Firefox and Flash but we managed to get vendor-locked somehow here.. by liking websites which used a technology that is only partially distributed to us and which isn't fully supported. When these websites, Adobe and Google alike ignore the issue, what are we to do? Ideally we'd boycott them all... although if you're here reading this tutorial you're probably more interested in a workaround than some pragmatic FLOSS advice :)

At Linux Mint we're in a funny position, we can't really help with this issue and we can't make this work out of the box. In the future, we can take steps to make it easier for you to solve it, but that's all we can do really. We can also highlight the conflict of interest Google has here and how bad it would be for Linux long-term if Firefox was to die.

Another thing worth mentioning is that Flash itself will die, and that's probably how this will get solved then. Steam and Netflix abandoned it, Youtube is starting to work without it. Of course some websites will switch to HTML5, but others might choose Silverlight or alike...

That's what I like with WINE, it immediately puts you on par with the audience all these actors do care about, and at the same time it's something you add to your system wich doesn't mess with the other software and which doesn't impact your existing version of Firefox.

I hope this tutorial helps, I know the guys in France have been desperate to watch M6 replay for a while :) I wish I had posted this earlier.

Good luck everybody.