Linux Silverlight implementation goes live
Summary
Topics
Moonlight forms part of the Novell-led Mono project, the lead developer of which is Miguel de Icaza. De Icaza announced the full release of Moonlight 1.0, which went into public beta at the start of December, in a blog post on Wednesday.
However, according to a Twitter post, or 'tweet', made by de Icaza on Wednesday: "Moonlight 1.0 actually shipped on 20 January for the Obama inauguration [but Novell's] PR/marketing [employees] were just not notified".
Silverlight is Microsoft's answer to Adobe's Flash, allowing rich web content, such as animation and multimedia, to be played back through the browser. Moonlight essentially allows content created using Silverlight to be played on Unix- or Linux-based systems — something that has been possible with Flash content for some time.
"We are feature-complete, we pass all the Microsoft regression test suites and we shipped support for Microsoft's Media Pack for x86 and x86-64 architectures," de Icaza wrote on Wednesday, adding that Moonlight 1.0 was available as a plug-in for Firefox 2 or 3, running on Unix or Linux systems using the X11 windowing system.
Silverlight is now onto version 2.0, but de Icaza's project already has a test build for Moonlight 2.0, to ensure compatibility with that version. According to de Icaza, the new version of Silverlight is a "major upgrade" from the original, being "more complete [and] more polished". He was, however, full of praise for Microsoft's co-operation in helping the Mono project — itself an attempt to make an open-source, .NET-compatible set of programming tools — stay compatible with Microsoft's more recent work.
"Microsoft has continued to help us all along in creating an open-source implementation of Silverlight," wrote de Icaza, who visited Microsoft's campus earlier this month. "They have open-sourced the Microsoft DLR, the Microsoft MEF framework and the crown jewels: the Microsoft Silverlight Control Library and the Control Toolkit under the OSI-approved MS-PL licenses. Without this it would have taken years for us to catch up."
Also on Wednesday, a related project called Moonshine — formally known as 'Pornilus', in a reference to a Roman senator — was announced by developer Aaron Bockover. Moonshine, which requires Moonlight to have been installed first, uses Moonlight's inbuilt Windows Media capabilities to "bring Windows Media playback to Linux in a fully legitimate way, without forcing the end user to worry about what a codec is", Bockover wrote in a blog post.
An installer module for Moonshine is now available for Firefox 3 on Linux systems, and Bockover said packages for OpenSuse and other distributions would soon be made available.
Talkback Most Recent of 12 Talkback(s)
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This is the point where all ....
... the Linux Fanboys should say "Thank you Microsoft".
ShadeTree12th Feb 2009 -
no way!
I'm sure there is some fine print or hidden agenda like attacking real OSS companies like Red Hat.
Linux Geek12th Feb 2009 -
I have never found ....
... you to be reasonable or rational. I guess gratefull was a stretch!.ShadeTree12th Feb 2009 -
For what...
...they didn't do anything.
storm14k12th Feb 2009 -
Interesting statements from Miguel de Icaza's blog
http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Feb-11.html
"Microsoft has continued to help us all along in
creating an open source implementation of Silverlight.
They have open sourced the Microsoft
DLR , the Microsoft MEF framework and the
crown jewels: the Microsoft Silverlight Control
Library and the Control Toolkit under the OSI-approved MS-PL licenses. Without this it
would have taken years for us to catch up."
honeymonster12th Feb 2009 -
Why
Why on earth would MS do this?
The answer is simple. It gives them an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.
Firstly it helps them go after Adobe's flash. After they have succeeded there they can then turn their patent threat on Linux. Wait you say... MS has given a royalty free promise concerning Silverlight...
Maybe, but the MS has already stated that Mono infringes their patents. Silverlight depends on Mono libs. MS is hell-bent on destroying Linux. Anyone who thinks otherwise is blind and/or a fool.
Tim Patterson12th Feb 2009 -
Shhhhhhh ...
Here we are all having fun and celebrating this great event and you come along like a party pooper and start confusing us all with facts. Shame on you Tim! You should drink a little of the Kool Aid like the rest of us and you would suddenly see how MS has changed and life is going to be happy ever after.
George Mitchell13th Feb 2009 -
RE: Linux Silverlight implementation goes live
Now flash binaries work fine on my resource limited netbook,
I get the full deskto pexperiance, but mono and all its
applications just eat memory for breakfast. With a slow SD
and only 512MB RAM this thing starts to swap like crazy.
Now is All of the code released under GPL?
chromeronin12th Feb 2009 -
Mono ... Flash
Mono is bloated and slow. This is required to make it compatible with MS.
On the other hand, Adobe's tight fisted control of Flash, and reluctance to build a x64 Linux module is their failure. If they can write their code to be SPARC compatible, why not x64?
EMonkIA17th Feb 2009 -
Flash for x64
Adobe is working on a 64-bit implementation, which should be ready for prime time soon.
barence77318th Feb 2009 -
rarsa13th Feb 2009 -
Bob@...17th Feb 2009
Talkback - Tell Us What You Think
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