The ordeal is finally over folks. No need for workarounds and troubleshoots anymore, Netflix works out of the box in Ubuntu and hopefully other Linux OSes via latest Google Chrome stable.
Netflix on Ubuntu is a non-issue from now on
Netflix and Steam were high up in the wishlist for many Ubuntu users. Steam materialised about two years ago and Steam for Linux has kept on adding games ever since. Although there were workarounds to make Netflix work in Ubuntu all long, there were all just that, workarounds. Now, all you need is the latest Chrome and Netflix works out of box in Ubuntu!
The user-agent switching hack was working so well for me anyway, so this doesn't change much in my case. But it is a welcome addition no matter what. Now I could simply recommend the latest Chrome Stable to anyone who wants Netflix on Ubuntu.
The only drawback is the fact that, you have to have Google Chrome to make it work. As you all know, Ubuntu comes with Firefox by default and Netflix won't work without hacks such as pipelight and such. The latest Google Chrome stable for Linux comes with the required DRM module called Encrypted Media Extension or EME for short.
I tested this on Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn and and elementary OS Freya 0.3 which is based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. In both systems, Netflix works just great using nothing but the latest Google Chrome stable. The updated libnss3 files are the only bottleneck as far as I understand. Since I already had an upgraded libnss3 package in elementary OS Freya (which was required for user-agent switching hack to work), I'm not sure if the updates have started to make it work for Ubuntu 14.04 already. Can anybody please confirm?
I tested this on Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn and and elementary OS Freya 0.3 which is based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. In both systems, Netflix works just great using nothing but the latest Google Chrome stable. The updated libnss3 files are the only bottleneck as far as I understand. Since I already had an upgraded libnss3 package in elementary OS Freya (which was required for user-agent switching hack to work), I'm not sure if the updates have started to make it work for Ubuntu 14.04 already. Can anybody please confirm?