Hulu on Linux looks great

Neat news for Linux Internet TV watchers Hulu has just released a version of its Hulu Desktop for Linux.

As a big Internet TV fan in general, and both a Hulu and Linux fan in specific, I really welcome this new addition to the Hulu family.

This first release of Hulu Desktop for Linux is built for Fedora 11 and Ubuntu 9.04. But, Hulu says, and I just checked, and found that you an run Hulu Desktop for Linux on other Linux distributions, which include the GLib 2.16, which is included with any post 2008 version of Linux.

I just tested out Hulu Desktop for Linux on MEPIS 8.0, a great Debian-based Linux desktop. I was able to successfully install Hulu Desktop by first downloading the 64-bit Ubuntu version of Hulu and then running the installation routine with KDE’s KPackage.

While the program didn’t make it into my MEPIS KDE 3.5 menu-tree, I had, as you can see, Hulu Desktop up and running in a jiffy by entering the program name in MEPIS’ Run Command utility.

Hulu Desktop works great on Linux

Nice! With a little polishing up by the Linux distributors, I expect to see the Hulu Desktop up and running on all the significant Linux desktops within a week.

Of course to do any of this, you’ll also need to have the Adobe Flash Player 9.0.124 or higher running on your desktop. The current Adobe Flash Player for Linux is 10.0.32.18. I discovered that open-source Flash players, like Gnash, won’t work with the Hulu Desktop.

Once I had it up and running, it worked like a charm. Although I was unable to test it, Hulu also claims that if you have your Linux PC set up to work with infrared remote controls that support LIRC (Linux Infrared Remote Control), you can use IR supported remotes to use your Linux PC as a remote-controlled Hulu TV.

I’m impressed. Not only do we have a major force in Internet TV supporting Linux, they’ve done a darn good job of it right out of the gate.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I want to re-watch this season’s second episode of House on my Linux desktop.