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Silverlight On the Way To Linux
Afforess writes "For the past two years Microsoft and Novell have been working on the 'Moonlight' project. It is a runtime library for websites that run Silverlight. It should allow PCs running Linux to view sites that use Siverlight. Betanews reports 'In the next stage of what has turned out to be a more successful project than even its creators envisioned, the public beta of Moonlight — a runtime library for Linux supporting sites that expect Silverlight — is expected within days.' Moonlight 2.0 is already in the works."
"For the past two years Microsoft and Novell have been working on the 'Moonlight' project.
Translation: for two years, Microsoft has been using Novell to pretend they're not working on the Linux platform and aren't trying to embrace/extend it.
There ain't no way Silverlight will end up on my hard-drive. Having the Flash player is bad enough already.
Unless there was an advantage to the lock in of flash why is there a reason to swap to another propitiatory product? Especially a linux clone that will always be behind Microsoft's offering.
If Silverlight was GPL and available for use by all then there might be a reason to adopt it over flash, but to just swap monopolies, no thanks.
"Because we are not employing at entry level, offshoring will kill our industry stone dead."
"Web 2.0" seems to be nothing more than a non-stop assault of useless animations, personalized/targeted advertisements, and automatically-loading and starting background music to make up for poorly-organized sites. Animated .gif banners, despite often being gaudy, were not so offensive as scripts that scour for statistical data about me to offer localized advertisements. The addition of new, non-standardized software to each user's browser is the worst way to embrace "The Cloud"; it focuses on style alone while only marginally catering to the needs of companies and their clients.
Silverlight will see some adoption by Linux users who cannot bear to browse the internet without clicking monkeys to win iPods. I doubt it would hit even that level of popularity before its current audience becomes so fed up with its more obnoxious aspects. The process of understanding Silverlight will be akin to that of installing Flash:
1) Install Silverlight/Moonlight to be amazed by a few useful applications
2) Install advertisement blocking add-on to avoid the droves of awful applications
3) Tweak blocking black/white-lists until Silverlight loses its appeal
4) Remove Silverlight/Moonlight
On the fringe out here I'll stick to elinks where I can get a majority of my information while avoiding information overload.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
What? Windows/OS X users prefer Firefox because they think it's better than the alternatives, not because they care about propietary soft [that much]. If the did they wouldn't be using Windows/OS X in the first place.
what silverlight seeks to achieve that isnt currently offered in the web browsing experience?
I have flash in linux, and spend more time blocking it than enjoying it. i have javascript but also spend more time blocking that from shooting popups, redirects, and ads to me than actually enjoying it.
id enjoy java, but its been embraced and extended by MS to the point that no Java on the web works well, if at all in IcedTea (and icedtea explicitly meets all the requirements for java!)
activeX has turned into a security laughingstock...so perhaps this is why we're seeing silverlight?? if thats the case, i recommend linux stay the fuck away from it.
and imho, i think CSS has been the only tech offered to the web i've really enjoyed. the point of the web is to offer something everyone can share, and the megacorps seem to be diligently working to ensure we cant do that.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Try displaying text in any way other than in horizontal line (i.e. rotated, at least by 90 degrees) in plain HTML+CSS+JS, then we can talk.
May I present SVG?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
What you don't see is that Microsoft wants to have it both ways:
(1) Pretend Silverlight is open and crossplatform and supported everywhere
(2) In actuality, only the Microsoft version works.
The complaint merely states that anyone who buys into this doubletalk will be deceived. If you want a real crossplatform API that's more powerful than HTML+SVG, you really have only three choices:
(1) Java, which is now free software
(2) Pick the subset of Flash that works with Gnash so that your code will work everywhere.
(3) If Gnash is too limited, stick to the minimum version of Flash that supports the feature you need...unless you're extremely advanced, that version should be available on all major platforms.
Oh, I have an idea; howabout using open standards to implement web sites and services, and then browser builders can implement the standards for maximum interopreability -- nah, that's crzy talk!
If that guy wants linux users to view his site, then he should use a technology that linux users can use. Silverlight is not the only technology to do the job. None of them are perfect. but when that guy made the decision to use silverlight, he knew that linux users were not going to be able to view his site. So no, he is not losing viewers because MS doesn't fully support silverlight. He chose a technology according to certain criteria and made the decision that linux users were not the target ones or not relevant enough.
It is exactly the same as writing a site in ways that only IE can display properly ( or the contrary as I have been know to do due to our user base)
Personally I don't really care about silverlight. if a site I go to uses it, then I assume that I am not the target user and go somewhere else. It is neither here nor there, the information will be available somewhere in another more friendly format, and if not, then I didn't really wanted to see it anyway.
Silverlight is not open source. Moonlight is. It is not a port, it is a sanctioned, but independent, rewrite, which is also related to advances in the Mono support for quite a few things that weren't there 2 years ago.
Those two words are contradictory: you need Microsoft's sanction (permission, as i understand) if you want to develop a 100% silverlight-compatible browser. (by the way, THAT's the difference between JavaScript and Silverlight). So how is it "independent"? Am I missing something here, my fellow slashdotters?
The largest prime factor of my UID is 263267.
I find this the irony of the situation. OSX and Linux basically came out of the gate with the same amount of following. Here we are in 2008, and who has actual market share? OSX...
What that should tell everybody is that MAYBE its not about "freedom". BUT MAYBE its about getting a computer to work when it should...
I am not saying Open Source is bad. Look at Apache, PHP, and co. Those projects work and are VERY popular. Even Linux server side has more damm success.
The GUI people need to start shifting gears...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
> OSX and Linux basically came out of the gate with the same amount of following.
Yeah... the "same amount of following".
When was that first version of MacOS again?
Yeah, that's right: 1984.
If you're going to lie, come up with better ones.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
He was careful to say "OSX", so his statement is technically true.
I don't think his conclusions are sound, though. The fact is, advertising has a real benefit and Linux advertising borders on non-existent - especially compared to Apple or MS. There are no "Ubuntu Stores", no Ubuntu counter at Best Buy... without this, Linux will not gather desktop market share approaching that of OSX or MS.
Note that Linux products that are advertised can be quite successful... EeePC, phones, routers, TiVo, server products, etc.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
why didn't this make it onto slashdot then???
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Actually Moonlight is compatible with version 1.1, and it was a bigger progress from 1.0 then it is between 1.1 and 2.0.
What's really important is that the overall architecture is now in place. And Silverlight 2.0 is shipped with open source controls (under their permissive license) that will be used with Moonlight with little effort, among other components like DLR.
Also, Microsoft may have helped, but responsible for Moonlight, they are not.
Also, please consider that Moonlight will be in a much better shape than any open-source Flash or Java clones available.
Depends on where you're living. Outside of the US and some European country hardly anyone has or wants Macs. Even the technically inclined users who know and could install themselves a Hackintosh use Ubuntu instead.