Besides my Mac Mini, 11″ MacBook Air, and 15″ Retina MacBook Pro my dark secret is that my ASUS X401A workhorse laptop and Dell Inspiron 620 i5 desktop run Lubuntu and Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit respectively.  Up until now I could do it all but one: Netflix.  Sure I have VirtualBox running a Win7 Ultimate instance but this always felt dirty.  Well, no more.  Finally, today, I was able to get Netflix HD running on both and with only three terminal commands (easy) and no emulator to speak of (well, technically its a package that runs on Wine with a Windows build of FireFox but you hardly notice it – they made it look like a native app).

Read on to find out how.

To install the package open a Terminal window and run the following three commands:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ehoover/compholio

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install netflix-desktop

After the package is installed, you’ll have a Netflix Desktop package in your dash. Search for Netflix to find the app.  Run it.
This will prompt you to install any remaining components like Mono.  Once done you can log-in with your Netflix account and have full screen HD Netflix.

I had some issues with sound (namely none) and it took a while to install on the laptop but the sound was easily resolved by simply opening the Systems Settings – I didn’t do anything but just click on Sound.

Next, I’ll build out a Linux box for my kids to watch Netflix and learn some Cocoa on GNUstep.