I wanted to see if I can still watch videos on my favorite websites in Ubuntu. Those websites require plugins to play videos. Unfortunately, the plugins do not work in Linux. Luckily, there is Wine. This is how I was able to watch videos in Ubuntu.
- Install Wine.
- Install Firefox (Windows version).
- Run Firefox (Windows version).
- Go to the website.
- Install the plugin that is needed to play video.
- Restart Firefox.
Why not just install the equivalent native Linux plugins? Flash runs great in Linux (Youtube, google video, etc use flash). Totem and other video players can play WMV or other streaming video types. RealPlayer also runs in Linux.
Running the Windows version of Firefox with Wine seems a bit excessive. It surely slows it down a considerable amount, and I’ve never run into anything online that I could do in Windows Firefox but not Linux Firefox.
Comment by probabilityzero — June 20, 2008 @ 34
There is no equivalent native Linux plugin. It is available only for Windows and perhaps Mac. So I had to use Wine.
I have a problem using Flash on one website. In Linux, I couldn’t get the full screen to work. But in Windows, full screen works.
Comment by amy — June 20, 2008 @ 33
Unless you’re going to a very obscure video site that uses some weird proprietary format, you shouldn’t have any trouble finding a native Linux alternative. I watch streaming video in Linux all the time and I’ve never run into problems. Sometimes it even plays better than it does in XP.
And full-screen flash works just fine for me. You might want to mess around with the “legacy fullscreen” setting in compizconfig if you’re having trouble with it.
Comment by probabilityzero — July 15, 2008 @ 59