Want to watch Hulu Desktop, a "Better TV than TV" on your 32 or 64-bit Ubuntu or Fedora system? It's available now and it works with your MCE or eHome remote (with some setup). Interested? Let's try a walk-through of downloading and installing it, and then trying it out.
Install 64-bit Flash Player (If Needed)
In order to run Hulu Desktop for Linux on a 64-bit system, you'll need the prerelease version of Flash Player for Linux 64-bit. Installing it requires the removal of the nsplugin and flashplugin-nonfree plug-ins which you're probably already using with Firefox. This can be done in System → Administration → Synaptic Package Manager in Ubuntu.
The download provides libflashplayer.so. You should create a new folder in your home folder under .mozilla named "plugins" and place the extracted file there.
If that was Greek to you, here's what to do. Download the tarball "libflashplayer-10.0.32.18.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz" from the page above to your desktop. Once it's saved there, right-click the file and select "Extract Here."
Under "Places" in the Ubuntu main system menu, select "Home Folder." Under "View" in the File Browser, select "Show Hidden Files." Then scroll down and open the folder named .mozilla (note the dot). In this folder, right-click and select "Create Folder." Name the folder "plugins" and then open it.
Drag the libflashplayer.so file from your desktop into this folder.
And that's it. Hulu Desktop will be able to find it there.
Download Hulu Desktop for Linux
Packages are pre-compiled for both 32 and 64-bit versions of Fedora and Ubuntu. I downloaded the 64-bit version for Ubuntu, and it came as a .deb package named "huludesktop_amd64.deb." As shown below, it was about 658.5 KB.
.deb files can be opened directly from the Package Installer, so right-click the file-name on your desktop or in File Browser and select "Open with "GDebi Package Manager."
The Package Installer should report that "All dependencies are satisfied" so click "Install Package" when you're ready.
This will lead to the EULA- end user license agreement- dialog which you can read - or not - and dismiss by checking "I have read and agree…" and clicking "OK."
And if there are no problems, the installation will soon complete.
Starting and Using the Hulu Desktop in Linux
The application is installed under Applications → Sound & Video, but let's get directly to the bad part: the performance of the application, in its present state of development, is poor.
Look at this CPU usage.
And this is a 2.2 gHz dual-core "2" laptop with 2 GB of RAM. Compare it with the same application running on a 2.6 gHz AMD 64x2 desktop with 3 GB of RAM in Windows Vista shown below.
It's averaging 55-65% CPU usage in Ubuntu 9.04 and 18% in Vista. Ah, the joys of alpha and beta software.
Note that the application runs completely in Flash, so the problems are probably related to the current condition of the Adobe Flash Player in Linux. Adobe has stated that they want performance and feature parity across the major platforms. It's nice that they have included Linux, if only Ubuntu and Fedora so far, in that group.
So is this acceptable? That depends.
It runs watchably well at half-screen and with only a little jerkiness at 1680 x 1050 full screen, but that high CPU utilization is worrying. You would want to make sure that nothing is blocking the outlet vents of your laptop, and this would not be a good app to use when running on battery. On a powerful desktop running Linux (with better temperature management), it might be acceptable, particularly if you can get it working with your remote.
The remote? That's another story.
Next: Using a Media Center (Microsoft eHome) Remote with Hulu Desktop