Widevine library for Ubuntu on ARM

[Marcos Alano]

Raspberry Pi OS, the official Linux distro of Raspberry Pi, released support for Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, etc. making Widevine library (library used in the DRM system by this streaming services) available on the repository, The ideia is do the same. The most benefited will be the Ubuntu Desktop for Raspberry Pi 4.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1920058/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

[This is an automated message. I apologize if it reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[Marcos Alano (mhalano)]

I don't think there is a package for now. The idea is to create a new
package as soon as possible so people using ARM devices as desktop can
watch videos over streaming services.

On Thu, Mar 18, 2021 at 5:35 PM Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot <
<email address hidden>> wrote:

> Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make
> Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a
> specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu
> in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source
> packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs
> about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your
> bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage.
> You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.
>
> To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1920058/+editstatus and add the
> package name in the text box next to the word Package.
>
> [This is an automated message. I apologize if it reached you
> inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]
>
> ** Tags added: bot-comment
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1920058
>
> Title:
> Widevine library for Ubuntu on ARM
>
> Status in Ubuntu:
> New
>
> Bug description:
> Raspberry Pi OS, the official Linux distro of Raspberry Pi, released
> support for Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, etc. making Widevine library
> (library used in the DRM system by this streaming services) available
> on the repository, The ideia is do the same. The most benefited will
> be the Ubuntu Desktop for Raspberry Pi 4.
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1920058/+subscriptions
>

--
Marcos H. Alano
Linux System Administrator
<email address hidden>

[Dave Jones (waveform)]

Unfortunately this isn't as easy as simply including the widevine library as (ignoring the legal issues for a second) the only available builds for it are for armhf, while the Ubuntu Desktop images are arm64 only. Hence, even if it were installed it wouldn't work out of the box with any default browser. An armhf browser would need to installed; while certainly possible this isn't an ideal situation. And then, of course, there's the whole legal can of worms.

I'll leave this open for now because perhaps there's a possibility that an arm64 build of widevine may show up in future? And if RaspiOS can distribute widevine without Google jumping on them, perhaps the legal issues are surmountable.

Nonetheless, the current status of this is somewhere between can't / won't fix.

[Dave Jones (waveform)]

Apparently there are now widevine arm64 libraries, which RaspiOS is distributing for use with Chromium and Firefox. So it's just a question of whether we wish to be similarly "legally bold"?