One of the best things about ubermix is its flexibility, both on and off the web. Yet there are times when a Linux plugin simply isn't available for a particular site. But have no fear, Pipelight is here!

Pipelight is a combination of WINE and a browser plugin that enables using web plugins designed for Windows directly in Firefox on ubermix. Thought you couldn't run Netflix because you can't run Silverlight? Think again! As of this writing, Pipelight supports the following plugins:

Supported standard plugins:

•   silverlight5.1
•   silverlight5.0
•   silverlight4
•   flash
•   unity3d
•   widevine

Additional plugins (experimental):

•   shockwave
•   foxitpdf
•   grandstream
•   adobereader
•   hikvision
•   npactivex
•   roblox
•   vizzedrgr
•   viewright-caiway
•   triangleplayer
•   x64-unity3d
•   x64-flash

Installing Pipelight on ubermix is easy. Simply open a terminal (ctrl-alt-t) and type the following commands to install:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:pipelight/stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install --install-recommends pipelight-multi
sudo pipelight-plugin --update

Once complete, Pipelight will be ready to install the plugins of your choosing. To find out which plugins it supports, type:

pipelight-plugin --help

Once you know the name of the plugin you want, simply type a command similar to the following to install it:

pipelight-plugin --enable silverlight

...replacing "silverlight" with the name of the plugin you wish to install, of course, if you want to install one of the others.

A few websites, like Netflix, still need one more step to work, because they check to see what operating system you are running before sending the appropriate video. To fake them out into thinking you are running Windows, install install the UAControl or User Agent Overrider extensions and use one of the following user agents:

• Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:15.0) Gecko/20120427 Firefox/15.0a1
• Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:22.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/22.0
• Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:23.0) Gecko/20131011 Firefox/23.0

Viola! Instant access to even more content on your favorite OS!

You may have noticed I said Firefox and not Chrome. It would be nice if plugin support was still available in Chrome, but Google in their infinite wisdom decided to disable external plugins as of version 35. Hopefully, they will come to their senses very soon.

Photo Credit: Bill Selak via Compfight cc