We previously covered watching Netflix on Linux and concluded that using a virtual machine was your best bet. There’s now an even better solution – a “Netflix Desktop” app that allows you to watch Netflix on Linux.

This app is actually a package containing a patched version of Wine, the Windows build of Firefox, Microsoft Silverlight, and some tweaks to make it all work together. Previously, Silverlight would not run properly in Wine.

Note: While this worked pretty well for us, it’s an unofficial solution that relies on Wine. Netflix doesn’t officially support it.

Installing Netflix Desktop

Not only have the developers done the work of tweaking all this software and putting it into an easy-to-use package, they’ve also provided a PPA that allows you to easily install the Netflix Desktop package on Ubuntu.

To install it, open a Terminal window (search for Terminal in the dash and press Enter) and run the following commands: