14 DAY TRIAL // Fedora Project's Jiri Eischmann reports that Netflix support is not working for users of the Fedora Linux operating system when using the latest version of the Mozilla Firefox web browser.
Last month, Mozilla launched a new ESR (Extended Support Release) of its cross-platform and open-source web browser, Firefox 52.0, a long-term supported branch that will receive security updates until spring 2018. As expected, it already landed in the repositories of various widely-used GNU/Linux distros, including Fedora.
With the launch of Mozilla Firefox 52.0, Netflix also announced last month that they would offer out-of-the-box support for Mozilla Firefox 47 and later releases, finally allowing Linux users to watch their favorite TV shows and movies using the Firefox web browser instead of Chrome or other Chromium-based browsers like Vivaldi.
Netflix blocks Fedora Linux users
According to Jiri Eischmann's latest blog post, Netflix blocks Fedora users from watching movies and TV shows using the Mozilla Firefox web browser, despite the fact that both Mozilla and Netflix claim that Firefox 52 at least should support Netflix's updated HTML5 player on all Linux-based operating systems. Users have reported that they are being redirected to the Silverlight player instead.
"Both Netflix and Mozilla claim it should work, but it doesn’t for them," said Jiri Eischmann, Software Engineering Associate Manager at Red Hat. "Netflix still forwards them to their Silverlight player. That’s pretty much a showstopper because Silverlight has been dead for quite a few years and it has never been easy to make it work on Linux."
Despite his efforts to contact the Netflix customer support and explain the issue, they appear to be clueless how to solve the problem. So after some more research, Jiri Eischmann discovered that Netflix doesn't allow custom User-Agents on its video streaming platform on Linux, which means that not only Fedora users are affected but also those who use OpenSuSE, Debian, or even CentOS.
Jiri Eischmann also discovered that Firefox 52 on Ubuntu was not blocked by Netflix, but some users in the comments said it didn't work for them, so the only fix right now to this annoying issue is to not use a custom User-Agent for Firefox if you want to watch Netflix shows. Simply use an add-on that lets you easily change the User-Agent to only display Linux, not a specific distro to fix the problem. Does Netflix work well on your distro?
Updated: We've been informed by Ikey Doherty and Joshua Strobl of the Solus Project that Netflix movies and TV shows play just fine on the Solus operating system because it doesn't use a custom User-Agent for the Mozilla Firefox web browser. Please let us know if your distribution offers the same or Netflix is blocked.