Better Widevine (EME) support for Linux – Vivaldi Browser snapshot 1360.4

Linux Media Improvements

A number of popular media websites, like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, make use of Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), a form of Digital Rights Management (DRM). EME is handled by “Widevine” in Vivaldi. On Windows and macOS, Vivaldi fetches the latest Widevine shortly after first startup to allow these sites to play. On Linux this installation/update mechanism is not available. Previously, Linux users either had to manually install Widevine or we were able to use Chrome’s copy if you happened to have it installed alongside Vivaldi. Vivaldi now fetches Widevine during the install mechanism, meaning it should work out of the box for all Linux users.

Handling DRM is only half the problem. The other issue is that these services tend to use “proprietary” audio and video codecs that require expensive licensing agreements (e.g. MP4 [H.264/AAC]). In the future, we hope (and expect) many of the popular services will start to offer videos using open codecs (e.g. WebM [AV1/Opus]). Since we are not there yet, we are constantly looking at new ways to better handle the proprietary media situation. We have made two further changes in today’s snapshot. Firstly, if proprietary media is not working for you, we now provide terminal output explaining how you can resolve the issue (saving a trip to our Linux media help page). In addition, we now cache a copy of the library we use for displaying proprietary media. This saves you in the situations where your distribution updates the library to an incompatible version.

Media handling is still not perfect but we hope that these changes will make things a lot smoother for our Linux users. And of course, we will continue to look for even better solutions. Watch this space!

Known issues

• [Regression][Chr 71][Linux] Widevine does not work at all
• [Regression][Mac] Random crash on closing window

Download (1360.4)

• Windows: 64-bit for Win7+ | 32-bit for Win7+
• macOS: 10.10+
• Linux: DEB 64-bit (Recommended) | DEB 32-bit
• Linux: RPM 64-bit (Recommended) | RPM 32-bit
• Linux: DEB ARM32-bit (Unsupported) | DEB ARM64-bit (Unsupported)
• Linux: non-DEB/RPM ^[help]

Changelog

• [Regression] Cannot view image properties (VB-45579)
• [Regression] Crash when closing a window with a web panel playing audio content (VB-45842)
• [Regression] Crash when you click a bookmark in bookmarks menu (VB-40346)
• [Regression] First char entered in address field selected (VB-45505)
• [Regression] Moving a tab stack to an existing second window triggers crash (VB-43831)
• [Regression] Progress bar is not visible (VB-44482)
• [Regression] Right clicking a link from a popup window causes Vivaldi to crash (VB-45571)
• [Regression] Remove bottom tab spacing (VB-45524)
• [Regression] Tabbing through preferences changes new tab setting (VB-45274)
• [Linux] Cache known good versions of libffmpeg (VB-44716)
• [Linux] There is no up to date version of Widevine (VB-25847)
• [Windows][Linux] Allow Ampersand to Underline Access Key in Bookmarks and Notes (VB-45613)
• [Mac] Ampersand (&) does not display in folder items (VB-45644)
• [Mac] ⌘⇧C to copy text to note changed to ⌘⌥C (VB-36702)
• [Mac] Fullscreen UI drops down when it shouldn’t (VB-45008)
• [Address Bar] Caret in address bar jumps to the start when arrow key up is pressed (VB-45498)
• [Address Bar] Search without nickname adds space in front of search (VB-45762)
• [Bookmarks] Bookmark in folder can open in multiple tabs (VB-40580)
• [Bookmarks bar] Icon Drag and Drop space (VB-28113)
• [Notes] Added notification when a new note is created and the notes panel is closed (VB-23642)
• [Picture-in-picture] Media mode tab icon (VB-45627)
• [Settings] “Confirm Opening Bookmarks over Maximum of” – edit field constraints (VB-40350)
• [Settings] Move to submenu should contain New Window (VB-45264)
• [Settings] Obsolete “Zoom” shortcut and mouse gesture actions (VB-45152)
• [Settings] Tooltips not visible over text (VB-42440)
• [Tabs] Minimum tab width can interfere with positioning (VB-43274)
• [Tabs] Untiling tabs does not drop selection (VB-45471)
• [Tabs] Wrong tabs alignment after closing a tab (VB-44574)
• [Quick Commands] Foreground and Background Overriding (VB-45473)
• [Quick Commands] Localized keywords (VB-45491)
• [UI] Add page / all pages as bookmark should add under selected element (VB-45451)
• [UI] Artifacts on the buttons when system scale bigger than 100% (VB-45319)
• [UI] Only the visible area of the tab group popup should be clickable (VB-45036)
• Import of Firefox Bookmarks does not support descriptions transfer (VB-43246)
• Updated translations and allow for the possibility of more languages
• Upgraded Chromium to 71.0.3578.27

Main photo by Thibault Penin