I’m surprised not to find anything when I search for HBO. I have a new upgrade to Leap 42.2, and I’m under the impression that I used to be able to watch HBO Now on Chrome. Not any longer. I get the promo video, but the actual content just gives me a spinning white circle graph.
I CAN watch Netflix on Chrome, but in Firefox I get prompted to download a new version of Flash. Is this recommended?
I’m guessing there’s documentation on this, and I just haven’t found it. Any explanation would also be welcome. Thank you.
*Edit: I’m having trouble with YAST Software Manager, and have to use this command to open it manually: xdg-su -c ‘/sbin/yast2 sw_single’
When I do so, I see the google chrome stable package as installed, but what seems to be the version number is in red (and it’s the only one). Version # is 59.0.3071.86-1 *I think it’s possible that in 42.1 I might have installed it twice. I’m not sure how it is installed if it doesn’t show up in the repositories, and I haven’t re-installed it after upgrade to 42.2 (where I removed all old repositories).
On Tue, 13 Jun 2017 22:06:01 +0000, dcnblues wrote:
> I’m surprised not to find anything when I search for HBO. I have a new
> upgrade to Leap 42.2, and I’m under the impression that I used to be
> able to watch HBO Now on Chrome. Not any longer. I get the promo video,
> but the actual content just gives me a spinning white circle graph.
Yeah, it’s very similar for XFinity’s streaming as well. The only way
I’ve read to get that working is with WINE, but I’ve not had any success
with that myself.
> I CAN watch Netflix on Chrome, but in Firefox I get prompted to download
> a new version of Flash. Is this recommended?
Chrome is the only way to watch Netflix, from what I’ve found.
I (on Tumbleweed) can use Netflix fine on both Chrome and Firefox. ‘flash-player-ppapi’ is installed. IIRC Netflix moved to HTML5 a while ago.
Can’t tell about HBO Now, HBO pulled the plug re. their services in the Netherlands. What are they using? Silverlight?? If so, that’s a no go with both Chrome and Firefox these days for security reasons. MS told their Silverligt customers over a year ago to stop using it.
I knew that eventually I’d run across a limitation with Linux, but building a PC and choosing OpenSuse to learn has been a mixed bag. Honestly though, the look of Plasma 5 and beauty of the green light bulb page image, combined with a lot of complex install things that happened fairly easily have me encouraged that soon I’ll be able to junk my mac pro. I’m liking OpenSuse, in other words.
If I could just figure out how to install Chrome (and other software) things would really look up. Working my way through tutorials as it seems there’s no shortcut to fully learning the concepts…
I’ve sent HBO an email with my pyrotechnic displeasure, and will eventually stop subscribing and go with other options. Thanks for the help.
On Sun, 18 Jun 2017 00:16:01 +0000, dcnblues wrote:
> If I could just figure out how to install Chrome (and other software)
> things would really look up. Working my way through tutorials as it
> seems there’s no shortcut to fully learning the concepts…
Installing Chrome is pretty straightforward - searching for “install
Google chrome” using Firefox resulted in me getting to this page:
Download the 64-bit RPM (as indicated), and when you download it, you’ll
have an option to “open with install/remove software (default)”.
You can also save the file and install it manually using the tool of your
choice. I prefer the command-line, so I’d go to the directory I
downloaded it to and use:
sudo zypper in ./google-chrome-stable_current_x86_64.rpm
When it installs, it’ll add a repository to your repo list so it will
stay up to date.
I thought that but followed an update link from firefox. That updated from v24 to v25 and I have just updated to v26. They did announce no support for linux some years ago but seem to have started covering it again.
On firefox the update is pretty painless. The plugin section will announce it’s out of date. Follow the link, select the rpm, save, right click it, open with, install remove software and yast will install it. Firefox blocks playing when the plugin can be upgraded. Clicking on the video can over ride that.
Personally I don’t run Chrome. I run the open source version it’s based on, Chromium. I totally avoid closed source when I can.
This is incorrect. Adobe never completely dropped Linux support. For a time, they stopped updating the NPAPI Flash plugin on Linux, which affected Mozilla Firefox and other NPAPI based browsers only, but have always still continued updates for the PPAPI Flash plugin on Linux, used by Chrome/Chromium/Opera. There is a PPAPI Flash Plugin available in the Packman repository, and is usually kept fairly up to date. There is also another package called freshplayerplugin - PPAPI2NPAPI compatibility layer, which is a wrapper for the PPAPI Flash Player, which allows Firefox to use the same PPAPI Flash plugin as Chrome/Chromium/Opera. It works flawlessly in Firefox after both are installed, without any configuration or any other changes, provided that the PPAPI Flash Player Plugin and freshplayerplugin are both installed. The freshplayerplugin is available in both the Main openSUSE repo, as well as a newer version in the Packman repo.
However, two other things have also changed recently. Firefox claimed in an update, to have added native support to Firefox for PPAPI plugins a couple of months ago, though I have not yet tested this myself, to see if it actually works with the PPAPI Flash plugin directly and have not really had any reason to play around with it, since I am already using the freshplayerplugin. The other recent change, Adobe also appears to have started supporting the NPAPI Flash plugin for Linux again, very recently, as well. An RPM can be downloaded directly from the Adobe site, however this does not yet appear to be available again in any of the openSUSE repos, so it would have to be manually installed and periodically checked and updated manually as well, if someone wanted to use this. Keep in mind also that if you want to use Flash in both Chrome/Chromium and Firefox, and you chose to install seperate NPAPI and PPAPI plugins, you would also need to keep two individual Flash plugins updated as well. Personally though, I know that the PPAPI Flash Player and the freshplayerplugin works flawlessly for both Chrome and Firefox, and can be kept fairly up to date with the openSUSE Packman repos, with a single Flash plugin. But either method will work.
You can check your currently installed version of Flash on this page on the Adobe site, and match it against the latest version available- https://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/about/
You can also see there that the same version is available on all platforms, for all browser types, once again.
Netflix no longer requires Silverlight. It now uses HTML5 and H264 with the encrypted widevine extension, both of which should already be available in Chrome and Firefox now, out of the box. Netflix should play on Chrome out of the box on Linux, without any additional changes or software. However, Firefox still seems to need Flash to be installed and working as well, before Netflix will play, or at least it did the other day for me after doing a fresh install. Most other media sites should work with either browser once you take care of Flash and possibly an additional multimedia browser plugin, such as the VLC, xine, or mplayer browser plugins available from the openSUSE repos, depending on the specific website. I have not specifically tried HBO, as I do not have a subscription there personally. However, with the proper plugins installed, most major media services seem to play just fine on Linux (Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, Hulu, etc.).
Thanks for the info - and yes, I use Netflix regularly on openSUSE and
never have had a problem with it. HBONow and XFinity (Comcast) both
require Flash, and neither work with Linux at all. If there’s a way to
do it, I haven’t found it - and it’s not for a lack of trying.
Adobe’s support of Flash on Linux has been spotty at best - and they did
discontinue Flash development at one point, but apparently have started
again.
Am still anticipating a Mighty Eighth miniseries promised by Steven Spielberg over years. When it comes out eventually, if at all, I might spend more time on this.