Hulu on Ubuntu 9.04 problem fixed - check Firefox Adblock

Here's a possible solve for a problem many people seem to be having getting hulu.com to play videos in Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackelope.

After I put Ubuntu 9.04 on my new laptop, I started having problems loading videos from hulu.com. It worked for a day or so in Mozilla Firefox browser then suddenly stopped, and I couldn't figure out why. I thought maybe hulu didn't support Linux, but found on their support page that they in fact do, and all that's really need is a Flash plugin, which I already had installed.

I searched forums for several days, tried uninstalling flash plugins and installing new ones and various other fixes, but still nothing worked. Then last night I installed a different browser and hulu worked just fine, so it was pretty clear that flash wasn't the problem. As a last ditch resort, I decided to reinstall Firefox, and it was that decision that led to the discovery of what was really wrong. I searched for info on uninstalling Firefox (which isn't that easy to find!) and stumbled upon the Firefox support pages. Mozilla recommended troubleshooting before doing a complete reinstall, so I (serendipitously) followed their advice.

Starting Firefox in safe mode (type firefox -safe-mode in Terminal), with add-ons switched off, hulu miraculously ran just fine. Then I closed the safe Firefox window, and started Firefox in normal mode (just clicking on the icon in the menu, without running safe mode) then started by disabling all add-ons, then enabling them one by one (of course, restarting Firefox after each new enable).

I finally discovered it was the Adblock Plus add-on causing all the trouble. I had blocked an ad on hulu, but made the mistake of blocking the entire http://www.hulu.com/* domain. I unblocked it, then found I could block http://www.hulu.com/banner_container.swf instead and keep the video player unaffected.

So if you're having trouble with hulu on Ubuntu (or on any system with Firefox I suppose), try starting Firefox in safe mode to see if hulu runs. If it does, check your add-ons. It could be something with flash, or it could be as simple as unblocking hulu on Adblcok. If hulu won't run in safe mode, it looks like you're on your own.

My New Ubuntu ThinkPad

It's nice when technology is affordable, easy to use and open source, all in one package. That's why I'm so psyched about my new laptop, an IBM ThinkPad T43 for under $300 from a supplier on ebay. It came loaded with Windows, but I replaced it with the Linux operating system Ubuntu 9.04. I couldn't get it to load from the download, but got ahold of a CD and the process took about 15 minutes! For a final touch, I've loaded it with an awesome purple theme from Gnome-Colors.

Apparently ThinkPads have been rented to corporate folks who barely use them, which makes it possible to purchase them nearly new on the cheap. My friend Mark was the one who got the ThinkPad Linux idea in my head, but apparently he's not the first one to think it up. There's a whole website called ThinkWiki about ThinkPads running Linux. Lenovo bought the ThinkPad line several years back, but IBM as he original manufacturer is not only fine with Linux on their machines, but promoted it in a series of ads a couple years back.