Snott

Watch Netflix on Archlinux

archnetflix

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snott

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Finally someone came up with a way to watch Netflix on Linux. The Official workaround is Ubuntu only, but the Archlinux community has repackaged the software, which consists on the Windows version of Mozilla Firefox and a patched wine with Silverlight support.

For installing you can go 2 ways:

1- Get it from the repository

Add the following to /etc/pacman.conf:

[archnetflix]
Server = http://demizerone.com/$repo/community/$arch
[demz-repo-community]
 Server = http://demizerone.com/$repo/$arch

Both the database and the packages are signed, so you will have to add my key to pacman’s trusted key list.

# pacman-key -r 0EE7A126

verify it using the info below and then sign it with the local master key:

# pacman-key --lsign-key 0EE7A126

next, update your pacman database

# pacman -Syy

and install the netflix script,

# pacman -S netflix-desktop

2- Install it from the AUR

Using your favorite AUR helper (Complete list here, I recommend packer) do:

packer -S netflix-desktop

This will pull all the dependencies and compile the software (this compilation takes a LONG time, I have a ThinkPad with i5 processor and 8gb of ram, and took like an hour)

IMPORTANT: If you install the AUR version and later decide to use the repository, you have to REMOVE the netflix-desktop package from your system including the dependencies to avoid any problems later, then you can go ahead and reinstall the package using the repository version.

So, what’s the difference between the AUR version and the repository version?

The repository version has precompiled packages so you don’t have to compile them yourself

For more information you can check the Un-Official Arch Netflix repo

 

Comments

9 responses to “Watch Netflix on Archlinux”

  1. nicklej Avatar
    nicklej

    Wish I had found this like an hour ago before I started compiling from the AUR. Thanks anyway.

    Reply
    1. snott Avatar
      snott

      well you will have to recompile on every update, so you can still set up the repo to avoid the long compile time in the future. If you are going to do it, make sure you remove the AUR package first, as they are not interchangeable. Thanks for reading!

      Reply
  2. Joe Avatar
    Joe

    I just followed the directions and I get this error;

    error: failed retrieving file ‘archnetflix.db’ from demizerone.com : The requested URL returned error: 404 Not Found
    error: failed to update archnetflix (download library error)

    Reply
    1. snott Avatar
      snott

      from reading the Arch forum here:
      I can see that the repo URL has changed, please update it with this:

      [demz-repo-community]
      Server = http://demizerone.com/$repo/$arch

      and check again!

      if It works I will updated the article.

      Reply
      1. Guus Avatar
        Guus

        Well, I’m no Joe, but I can tell you [demz-repo-community]
        Server = http://demizerone.com/$repo/$arch works and the old one doesn’t. Thank you very much!

        Reply
      2. Guus Avatar
        Guus

        The only problem I have now is that I get this error everytime I try to install netflix-desktop
        “error: netflix-desktop: signature from “Jesus Alvarez ” is invalid
        :: File /var/cache/pacman/pkg/netflix-desktop-0.6.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz is corrupted (invalid or corrupted package (PGP signature)).
        Do you want to delete it? [Y/n] “

        Reply
        1. snott Avatar
          snott

          makes sense, since he is no longer maintaining the package! (hence the URL change) see here for more info: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1266436#p1266436

          So for this situation it is ok to continue with the unsigned packages. If I happen to find the new keys or maintainers I will post them here.

          Reply
          1. JadeSoturi Avatar
            JadeSoturi

            Ok. But how do you continue with the unsigned packages? When I select NO on the delete question, i still get: Errors occured, No packages were updated, so its not installed… 🙁

  3. Sky Admiral Avatar
    Sky Admiral

    Pipelight is now a good option for watching Neflix on Linux: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pipelight

    I had to remove the version of wine-silverlight that came from netflix-desktop and build from source, which takes a long while, but it works great with Chrome.

    Reply

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