MS Silverlight a Step Back For Linux Users

mattb0611 writes "Just as it seemed that Linux users (especially 64-bit users) would finally be able to enjoy streaming content with a minimum of hassle, Microsoft's new Silverlight software promises to throw a monkey wrench in the works — as they have yet to suggest any sort of Linux platform support."

Comments

Re:Aw, come on

[Anonymous Coward]

This got me to thinking, though - they support Mac. Perhaps that could be leveraged into Linux support somehow? I mean, Macs have a BSD-like basis, and a neat set of well-documented Mac APIs on top of it (Cocoa, etc.). How hard would it be to take a Silverlight runtime and write a 'wrapper' (an emulation layer, perhaps like WINE but on a much smaller scale) to get it to work on Linux?

Very, very hard. Forget the smaller scale than WINE - you're going to need large parts of the MacOS video infrastructure (CoreVideo, Quartz, likely QuickTime). If the mac client is not written in Cocoa, you'll need large parts of Carbon. (If it is in Cocoa, you could use GNUstep as a basis and avoid some work). You'ld be better off trying your luck with running the Windows version of Silverlight using WINE.

MacOS's BSD-like basis (and X11 support) means it is usually fairly simple to port Unix applications to MacOS (often just a recompile); the other direction is a lot more difficult.