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A while back we wrote about enabling HTML5 playback for Netflix in Ubuntu, but that required updating NSS and using an user-agent extension in Google Chrome. Well, NSS 3.17 landed today in Ubuntu 14.04 and 12.04, and thanks to this, Netflix should soon use HTML5 playback in Ubuntu, without requiring any tweaks.

Right now, the only tweak required to use Netflix with HTML5 playback in Ubuntu is to use a custom user agent in Google Chrome, but soon that won't be needed because a Netflix developer posted a message on the Ubuntu-dev mailing list a few days ago, asking if Canonical plans to update NSS to version 3.16.2 or newer and saying that if that happens, "Netflix would be able to make a change so users would no longer have to hack their User-Agent to play".

And with today's update, all the supported Ubuntu versions (12.04, 14.04 and 14.10 - currently in development) include NSS 3.17 so all that's left is for Netflix to add Ubuntu to their supported OS list, and Ubuntu users will have native Netflix HTML5 payback out of the box. Update: Netflix now works out of the box in Ubuntu, without having to change the user agent.

Of course, Google Chrome (stable - you no longer need Chrome Beta or Dev) is still needed, so it won't work with any other browser under Linux, because Netflix HTML5 requires the Encrypted Media Extensions which are bundled with it.

Opera for Linux supports Pepper Flash, but it's not bundled with it. There are two ways of installing Pepper Flash under Ubuntu (or Linux Mint, etc.) and thus, getting Flash to work in Opera:

Pepper Flash comes bundled with Google Chrome so simply downloading and installing Google Chrome will get Flash to work in Opera on Ubuntu:

If you use Ubuntu 14.04, 14.10 and 15.04 (and of course, Linux Mint 17 or 17.1), you can install pepperflashplugin-nonfree, a package that provides Pepper Flash on Ubuntu (and Debian). To install it, use the following command:

sudo apt-get install pepperflashplugin-nonfree

To enable H.264 in Opera on Linux, you'll need FFmpeg 2.3 or newer. FFmpeg was removed a while back from the official Ubuntu repositories but it has returned with Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid Vervet (currently under development). Update: in Ubuntu 15.04, Opera should support H.264 out of the box.

For Ubuntu 14.04 and 14.10, you can either compile FFmpeg yourself or use A PPA. One such PPA is Kyrill's FFmpeg next PPA, which provides FFmpeg for Ubuntu 14.04 and 14.10, backported from Ubuntu 15.04. 

Because this PPA provides FFmpeg packages that don't overwrite Libav, it shouldn't break anything on your system (the new FFmpeg packages ships with renamed libraries, like "libavdevice-ffmpeg", "libavutil-ffmpeg" and so on, so the packages can coexist with Libav from the Ubuntu repositories).

sudo apt-get remove ffmpeg-real

And another note: Kyrill's FFmpeg next PPA as well as FFmpeg from the Ubuntu 15.04 repositories doesn't provide the -extra packages, so aac encoding is limited to ffmpeg's native encoder, like Doug mentioned in a comment a while back. However, this won't affect Opera.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kirillshkrogalev/ffmpeg-next
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ffmpeg

Another PPA which provides FFmpeg (for Ubuntu 14.04 only; this PPA overwrites Libav and I didn't test the consequences of this) is Jon Severinsson's FFmpeg PPA.