// Home / Enterprise / News

Moonlight shines on second beta

By Stuart Turton

Posted on 18 Aug 2009 at 09:32

The second edition of the open-source version of Microsoft's Silverlight has hit beta.

The open-source Silverlight project, dubbed Moonlight, is available as source code and a plug-in for Firefox. It offers Linux users the chance to play the same content as their PC and Mac-based cousins.

Moonlight was created by the Novell-backed Mono team and is available for all major Linux distros including openSUSE, SUSE Linux Enterprise, Fedora, Red Hat and Ubuntu.

The project also has the backing of Microsoft, which is looking to speed adoption of Silverlight in the face of Adobe's dominant Flash.

Moonlight 2 was built to be compatible with sites written for Silverlight 2, but is also incorporates a few tricks from Microsoft's recently released Silverlight 3. These include the ability to run media content outside of the browser and extended support for DeepZoom.

As with its big brother, Moonlight 2 can also dynamically alter the quality of content depending on connection speed, hopefully reducing the need to buffer the stream.

Subscribe to PC Pro magazine. We'll give you 3 issues for £1 plus a free gift - click here

From around the web

User comments

Linux is PC & Mac plus more

It is good to see more linux articles please don't confuse people.
".. as their PC and Mac-based cousins." Implies linux runs on a different platform when infact it runs any platoform, and most commonly the PC. MS Windows and PC are not the same. Please us MS window when talking about windows and PC or just Computers when talking about all computers as a whole.

By M_Hamer on 18 Aug 2009

What M_Hammer said

^^ it's not just me that this upsets then. Thought about pointing it out before but with the whole MS windows I'm a PC ad thing I think it's a bit of an uphill struggle.

By SimonCorlett on 18 Aug 2009

I think the fact that on games and software you get the logo PC-DVD. Apple refers to Windows based PCs as a PC. So does Microsoft. The same as people say hoover when they mean a vacuum cleaner when you say PC it means a Windows based computer. Maybe Linux can have the name Linux. PC, Mac and Linux. Done

By TimoGunt on 18 Aug 2009

What M_Hammer said

"...as their PC and Mac-based cousins." should really be written "...as their Windows and Mac-based cousins."

Totally agree with M_Hammer

By nicomo on 19 Aug 2009

is there anything out there actualy written for silverlight?
I dont think I have it on my Linux or PC but haven't noticed any pop ups telling me i need to install it.

By darkhairedlord on 19 Aug 2009

oops sorry,

I have silverlight 2.0.40115.0 in my plugins!

By darkhairedlord on 19 Aug 2009

TimoGunt is right. PC was a term introduced by IBM to describe their new microcomputer. We didn't call a Superbrain a PC.
PC therefore describes both the "Intel" based hardware and the zillionth-generation descendant of DOS _together_
I guess the term for the hardware is actually microcomputer.

By AdrianB on 24 Aug 2009

Leave a comment

You need to Login or Register to comment.