Netflix App Hits the Chrome Web Store (Limited to Chrome OS on Linux)

By | August 9th, 2011 comments icon (6) Comments


netflix chrome web app page

Good news and bad. Netflix is now available as a web app for Chrome OS through Google’s Chrome Web Store [Twitter announcement]. Bad news is that it does not support other Linux-based operating systems that can run Google’s Chrome browser at the moment. The web app also appears to be working fine with Windows and Mac OS X as well. Something tells me Netflix is going to be getting an earful from the Linux community until this is resolved. Honestly, it’s quite a disappointment for those of us on Linux who have been waiting patiently for the company to show us some love. What’s curious is… how is this web app working on Chrome OS? Did Chrome OS get Silverlight plugin support and this is the reason other Linux distros aren’t supported? Quick way to check on the Cr-48 Chromebook — type about:plugins in the address bar.

UPDATE 1: my Cr-48 with the latest Chrome OS update shows a plugin called Netflix - Version: 1.0.2 (it comes direct from Google). Next step… see if some Linux hackers are able to copy this particular Chrome plugin from a Chromebook and install it to their Chrome running Linux distro of choice.

Location: /opt/google/chrome/pepper/netflixplugin.so
MIME type: application/x-ppapi-netflix Netflix 1.0.2

UPDATE 2: Looks like the Netflix plugin is built using Google’s new Native Client / Pepper Plugin API (PPAPI)




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  • David Tigue

    This is the biggest load of bullshit ever. If it can work on one version of Linux (ChromeOS) then why can’t it work in all versions of Linux running the Chrome browser. Netflix needs to get their shit together and get it done.

  • Anonymous

    If someone could upload that netflixplugin.so it would be incredibly easy to get it to work on other Linux operating systems. 

  • http://www.facebook.com/evan.tobin Evan Tobin

    you can just get it from the web store and fake the http headers and it works

  • Anonymous

    How would one go about doing that?

  • http://twitter.com/agrundner Alexander Grundner

    I was thinking it may be that easy as well, but I’m not so sure. There are additional Netflix files within that same directory, according to this Google Groups thread:

    https://groups.google.com/group/chromebook-central/msg/1400eeab5c04fefb

    /opt/google/chrome/pepper/netflix .info
    /opt/google/chrome/pepper/libnetflixidd .so
    /opt/google/chrome/pepper/netflixplugin .so

    I’ll do some investigating and testing later this evening.

    UPDATE/RESULTS: http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/2011/08/12/netflixs-chrome-os-plugin-may-be-one-of-googles-first-native-client-examples/

  • Corn Fry

    Seriously, at this point we’ve gotten far beyond the lip service they’ve been giving us for years about why it just *can’t* work on Linux, and have now moved on into what is obviously a concerted effort to keep it off of the Linux desktop. I mean, c’mon, it’s now running on every Linux platform known to man EXCEPT for a standard Linux desktop. We have ChromeOS, Android, roku’s, Wii’s (which use linux under the hood as well), etc etc etc.

    NEWS FLASH: THERE IS ABSOLUTLEY NO TECHNICAL REASON WHY IT CANNOT RUN ON LINUX.