14 DAY TRIAL // IT expert Nathan Haines published a tutorial instructing users of the Ubuntu Linux operating system about how to watch movies and TV shows on the American streaming service Hulu.
We reported last week about the changes made by Hulu to their Adobe Flash-based online video player used by all of its customers to stream movies and TV shows, no matter the operating system used. As a consequence, users of Linux distributions weren't able to watch videos on the Hulu streaming platform anymore.
In Ubuntu specifically, the instructions provided on the Hulu website when detecting lack of HAL support, didn't work because HAL is deprecated since Ubuntu 13.10 (Saucy Salamander). However, thanks to Michael Blennerhassett, who still maintains a HAL PPA, Ubuntu Linux users will be able to access Hulu's movies once again.
"A couple of weeks ago, Hulu made some changes to their video playback system to incorporate Adobe Flash DRM technology. Unfortunately, this meant that Hulu no longer functioned on Ubuntu because Adobe stopped supporting Flash on Linux several year ago," says Nathan Haines.
Without any further ado, if you're using Ubuntu Linux and want to watch TV shows and movies on the Hulu platform, you must add the third-party HAL PPA using the first command listed below, and then install the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) software using the second command. That's it, you can now enjoy Hulu on Ubuntu!
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install hal