Linux gets native Hulu desktop support.

I just caught wind today of the native desktop client for Hulu in Linux.  My desktop runs Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 64-bit.  I downloaded the 64-bit deb from http://www.hulu.com/labs/hulu-desktop-linux

The first time I tried to run it a window told me it could not find flash on my system.  I found flash at the following three locations on my computer:

/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so
/usr/lib/firefox/plugins/libflashplayer.so
/usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so

When I modified ~/.huludesktop to point to the first and third location I got this same error.  When I pointed it to the second location the application would begin to run and then segfault.

A little Googling showed me two possible the solutions.  The first was to copy the plugin from /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/libflashplayer.so to ~/.mozilla/plugins and then point the hulu configuration file to there.  That worked, but the best solution is to point the hulu configuration file to /var/lib/flashplugin-installer/npwrapper.libflashplayer.so

Once the configuration file knew where to get flash everything runs great.  The videos look good.

I also installed it on my 32-bit laptop and everything worked without any hastle trying to configure the hulu configuration file.

I filed a bug on the hulu site about the issue with the 64-bit installation and I hope they fix it soon so users have a good installation experience.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1286425 has a good tutorial on being able to launch Hulu straight from MythTV.  I gave that a spin on my laptop and it works good as well.  There is also some conversations about getting Hulu working well, including the resolution to my 64-bit problems.