Pipelight
Silver Screen
© Lead Image © Ali Ender Birer, 123RF.com
Video-on-demand services often don't play well with Linux because they depend on Microsoft's Silverlight browser plugin. Luckily, you can call on the Wine offshoot Pipelight to rescue your next home movie night.
Video-on-demand services such as Netflix or Hulu are so firmly established in the United States that they actually produce their own exclusive series, such as the political thriller House of Cards. For many users, video-on-demand is the new TV, and millions of modern couch potatoes are actually cancelling conventional cable television services so they can watch their favorite programs on their computer or mobile devices.
Unfortunately, most video-on-demand services do not officially support Linux because they rely on the Silverlight browser extension [1]. Silverlight was developed by Microsoft and is only available for Windows and Mac, with no plans to support free operating systems. The Linux alternative, Moonlight [2], once developed jointly by Microsoft and Novell, never did support the same DRM functions used with Silverlight and has since been dropped.
The good news is that this lack of Silverlight support doesn't mean Linux users won't have their cozy video evenings. A Linux tool called Pipelight [3] lets browser plugins designed for Windows – including Silverlight, Flash, and Shockwave – run on Linux.
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