Linux is FREE, both as in liberty and as in FREE BEER. Some folks carry this to extremes and won't use anything on their PC that isn't open source and free. I call them the "purists".
I am a pragmatist, I use Linux Mint that has all the binary blob proprietary codexes and proprietary graphics drivers from all the various suppliers built right into it from the get-go. I don't want to be inconvenienced by somebody's philosophical hang ups, really .....
So, Amazon Prime Instant Videos quit working on me two weeks ago. Amazon when asked WTF simply says they honor Digital Media Restrictions (the law) and use the latest available HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) and the latest 11.7 Flash specifications. Flash quit supporting anything but MS and I-OS at revision 11.2 so anything written for Flash 11.7 is an automatic issue these days.
These are Flash versions and digital rights management signatures as pushed by MS, Intel, music industry, film industry, etc.
It is the law now. Some bureaucratic rule writing arsehole in Washington says so. It wasn't really passed as a law, it was just a regulation that has all the weight of law. So it becomes the law unless somebody passes a real law that undoes it. Or some politicians go slap the hands of the bureaucrats for getting frisky.
(cutting their funding works pretty well, I hear)
What this means is that if your computer doesn't reply back in to say you properly own or have a current license for the stuff you are viewing then Amazon's oh so legal servers will lock you down after 15 seconds of viewing. If your machine lacks the software to do this data exchange, you get locked down as well.
And this has put the backs up of all the international open source people and they just ain't a gonna have anything to do it. Remember, the vast majority of open source people do NOT live here in the USA, and they view our whacky little DRM laws as a subject for bad jokes down at the pub after work.
Not even Linux Mint (French) or Firefox (Mozilla Foundation International) will go as far as doing anything to fix it (just yet anyway).
HOWEVER, Google (USA) will and Chrome browser has. Google wrote a "written from scratch" Flash equivalent, registered it with DMR people and paid for all of it, nice and legal ....
So, if you want to watch you some movies during this time of thumb twiddling semi-religious "freedom furor" go get you a free download of Google Chrome Browser.
I find I already pretty much know how to use it and it sucks up your preferences and bookmarks from whatever you are currently using just fine. It even winds up instantly LOOKING like whatever you were using before, which I think is kinda nifty neat too. I imported all the settings and bookmarks and Chrome browser imported the "look and feel" specs for my tweeked Firefox set-up too.
Nice.
This experience also lets me know that Chrome OS wouldn't be a show stopper to me if that ever became necessary, so that too is something good to know.
I guess this sort of "freedom" stuff happens every few years ..... we will all get over it in six months or so.
And thank you Google, for writing your own modern version of FLASH equivalent to make this possible and paying for all the DRM registration B.S. that went along with it. And then giving it away for free to old cheapskates like me.
And yes, we know you are good enough to write your own OS, and we also know you just don't want to "be evil" and go finish off Microsoft yourself. You'd prefer for the digital land masses to just slowly roll right on over them all naturally and quietly.
We get that.