Fresh Moonlight
Moonlight is the name of Novell's Linux implementation of Microsoft's Silverlight 1.0 technology. Moonlight is now available in a Beta version for 32 and 64 Bit Linux systems, albeit only for Firefox users.
With Silverlight, Microsoft aims to compete with the widely used Flash from Adobe, at present with little success. But if few web pages are as yet using Silverlight, Moonlight has one distinct advantage over Flash: the simple plugin installation via the customary Firefox add-on, whereas the Flash installation is still somewhat laborious.
The Beta brings improvements in performance, fixes memory leaks and also supports the "Microsoft Media Pack" which contains the Microsoft Media Codec from Windows, that meanwhile, is also available for Linux. The Moonlight plug-in loads the codecs automatically when a page calls for it. In addition, Moonlight supports adaptive streaming. This means that the server regulates the compression of video data regardless of the connection flow-rate. If the bandwidth shrinks, the server sends the video at a lower Bit rate.
Whereby Moonlight 1.0 is based on the Silverlight 1.0, it comes with a 2.0 Media Stack, although the DRM parts are missing. This enables Moonlight to support all media codes from Silverlight 2.0, but doesn't mean that the browser can handle all of Silverlight's applications. Moonlight recognizes the video codecs WMV1 to WMV3, WMVA and WVMC1 and the audio codecs WMA7 to WMA10 and MP3. In the meantime, Microsoft are automatically redirecting Linux users who want to watch videos or films on Silverlight to the Moonlight page, but the Firefox plug-in can also be downloaded from the website. Further browsers (Opera, Konqueror), along with various systems (OpenSolaris, BSD) are to be supported in future. A list of pages that Moonlight more or less supports is available here.
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Linux Mint 20 Reaches EOL
With Linux Mint 20 at its end of life, the time has arrived to upgrade to Linux Mint 22.
-
TuxCare Announces Support for AlmaLinux 9.2
Thanks to TuxCare, AlmaLinux 9.2 (and soon version 9.6) now enjoys years of ongoing patching and compliance.
-
Go-Based Botnet Attacking IoT Devices
Using an SSH credential brute-force attack, the Go-based PumaBot is exploiting IoT devices everywhere.
-
Plasma 6.5 Promises Better Memory Optimization
With the stable Plasma 6.4 on the horizon, KDE has a few new tricks up its sleeve for Plasma 6.5.
-
KaOS 2025.05 Officially Qt5 Free
If you're a fan of independent Linux distributions, the team behind KaOS is proud to announce the latest iteration that includes kernel 6.14 and KDE's Plasma 6.3.5.
-
Linux Kernel 6.15 Now Available
The latest Linux kernel is now available with several new features/improvements and the usual bug fixes.
-
Microsoft Makes Surprising WSL Announcement
In a move that might surprise some users, Microsoft has made Windows Subsystem for Linux open source.
-
Red Hat Releases RHEL 10 Early
Red Hat quietly rolled out the official release of RHEL 10.0 a bit early.
-
openSUSE Joins End of 10
openSUSE has decided to not only join the End of 10 movement but it also will no longer support the Deepin Desktop Environment.
-
New Version of Flatpak Released
Flatpak 1.16.1 is now available as the latest, stable version with various improvements.