Linux version Firefox 49: no more plugins needed for DRM services like Netflix
The next version of Firefox, issue 49, due out in September, supports Widevine DRM on Linux. This means that services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime will also work on Linux systems via HTML5 from then on.
On Windows and Mac OS X, Firefox has supported the Widevine Content Decryption Module from Google for some time, and on Windows there is also the Primetime Content Decryption Module from Adobe. Currently, the easiest way for Linux users who want to use Widevine is to install Google Chrome.
Although Mozilla integrates Widevine from version 49, this does not mean that the functionality works directly via services that use it: Widevine has also been in Chromium for some time, the open source project on which Chrome is based, but Netflix thought for longer that it related to an unsupported browser. This is because the service itself also has to accept the browser, something that took some time with Google Chrome.
Adding Widevine to Firefox may also benefit users of 32-bit operating systems because Google has stopped releasing a 32-bit version of the browser for several years. Old npapi plugins are completely banned from version 53 of the browser, after which plugins like Silverlight will no longer work
The Widevine module is not installed by default, but when you get to a site that requires the module, it installs itself. The latter can be disabled via ‘Preferences’ under ‘Plugins’ so that the module is not installed, even if a site with such content is visited.
Firefox 49 with Widevine on Lubuntu 32bit 16.04 installation