Microsoft and Novell said Tuesday they are nearly ready with a beta version of Moonlight - a Firefox add-on that allows Silverlight content to play on Linux PCs.
The software is being announced as the companies tout the second anniversary of their peace deal.
Work on Moonlight began in May 2007 and an alpha version was shown a month later. Novell's Miguel De Icaza, who is heading the Moonlight effort, said on his blog last week that the beta version should be out within days.
The move helps Microsoft in its effort to position Silverlight as a rival to Adobe's Flash. Flash already runs on Linux and is installed on a large percentage of PCs. Both Flash and Silverlight also run on Macs.
Silverlight's biggest early win was Microsoft's deal with NBC that saw the technology used to power the video on NBCOlympics.com. Silverlight suffered a blow earlier this week when Major League Baseball in the US said it was switching to a Flash-only player for the 2009 season.
In addition to the Moonlight announcement, Novell is releasing a management pack that plugs in to Microsoft's System Center product that will allow IT managers to more easily oversee mixed deployments of Suse Linux and Windows.
As for the broader work between the two companies, they now have more than 200 joint customers, said Susan Heystee, Novell's general manager global strategic alliances. That's up from fewer than 70 customers at the end of the first year.
Heystee said: "That really goes to the value proposition and the focus we've really had around interoperability. Many of these companies are deploying Linux and windows in their datacentres."
1
bill hayze - 21/11/08
Absent, almost deceptively, are the specs. In version numbers, Silverlight is at 2.0, while Moonlight has yet to reach 1.0. Great. I love using things that "almost" work.
Stick with flash. You'll reach everybody.
» Report offensive content
2
John - 25/11/08
I am glad to see Moonlight or Silverlight as Flash’s competition; monopoly is never good, whether it is Microsoft, Adobe or anyone.
We have seen much cool Flash based Video mashup web sites, check out this one. This seems to be the first site that I have come across which is based in Silverlight 2.
Check out Cool Silverlight 2 Web sites at http://silverlight.net/Showcase/
UltraLearn.com, rated 2nd at http://silverlight.net/Showcase/ is also using Silverlight 2 / Moonlight 2 in their web based Ultra Mashup studio. Their Studio allows video, audio, images, polls, surveys to be mashed up and synced with PowerPoint or other presentations , add chapters, marker and search keywords.
Web Site http://ultralearn.com/ultralearn/MashupStudio.aspx
» Report offensive content
3
CrazyEnigma - 05/12/08
As much as there is merit in Moonlight, herein lies the problem with it. It will be just like how Javascript is interpreted in each of the browsers that support Javascript. Different! Then you have the problem of having to debug the different browsers. Javascript nightmare all over again.
Adobe has control over their plug-ins as well as others have written some for Linux, but Adobe has a plug-in, and is pretty much up-to-date, and yes they have their problems with supporting different browsers, but at least they are control the expected outcome of their player, and if there are delays, that is only because they are concentrating on the most users at present as is M$, and hopefully there will be more users on windows alternatives, such that there is enough users to warrant a release at the same time.
This is the main reason why I don't adopt M$ endeavors, and if Vista gives you a glimpse of what Silverlight will be, I think that is a good gauge. There is going to be a major issue with adoption and market penetration.
» Report offensive content