"Silver light" is released in Linux Moonlight 1.0

In my opinion, most people may not like private videos or audio codecs. However, some websites, such as the NBC Olympics website, use Microsoft's proprietary Silverlight streaming media technology. Until a few days ago, if you use the Linux platform to browse these websites, you will not see any videos. However, all of this has completely changed with the release of Moonlight 1.0. Moonlight 1.0 is the product of Mono, an open-source project sponsored by Novell. The Mono Project aims to port. Net code to the Linux platform. Moonlight 1.0 is an open-source Firefox plug-in that allows Linux users to browse Silverlight content.

Moonlight not only enables Linux users to watch Silverlight content, but also plays Microsoft's WMV, WMA, MP3, and other video and audio files through the Microsoft Media Pack, an authorized decoder.

From the Go-Mono site, you can download Silverlight 1.0 as a Firefox plug-in. This is a very simple operation. Anyone who has downloaded the Firefox plug-in can easily complete this operation. However, make sure that you allow the website to download Moonlight to your browser.

According to the official release, Moonlight supports 32-bit SLED 10 SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop), the latest openSUSE, Fedora and Ubuntu, and 64-bit SLED and openSUSE. Personally, I have not encountered any problems when installing and using Moonlight. Moonlight not only supports the above operating system, but also runs on MEPIS 8 Based On Debian 5) Lenny and Miti 6 Based on Ubuntu 8.10.

The Moonlight Installation Guide on the official website may make you think that after installing Moonlight, the system will prompt you to install the Microsoft Media package. In fact, this is not the case. On the contrary, when you first visit a Silverlight website that requires any Microsoft codecs, you will be prompted to download the Microsoft Media package.

Microsoft Media package is also a Firefox plug-in. It can only be used for content that has been encapsulated as Silverlight. Therefore, you cannot use it to watch most WMV videos on Windows Media sites.

You will also find that some Silverlight websites, such as the NBC Olympics website and Netflix, still cannot be watched normally after installing Moonlight. This may be because your Web browser and operating system combination are "unqualified ".

In a statement, Miguel de Icaza, founder of Mono and vice president of Novell development platform, said, "Moonlight allows Linux users to experience the advantages of Silverlight multimedia content. The release of Moonlight 1.0 is a milestone because it breaks the boundaries between Windows users and Linux users on multimedia content access and creates equality for users' visual experience ."

This sounds reasonable, and Moonlight does not disappoint everyone, but in fact there are few websites using Silverlight technology. In addition, it seems that people have not invested much effort in creating Silverlight applications and content.

I am sure that the website that currently supports Silverlight will allow you to use Moonlight. This is just a website design problem that can be easily fixed.

However, Silverlight is also in a difficult situation. Currently, most Internet video streams use Adobe Flash technology, and Adobe AIR also provides medium-level Internet application interfaces as promised by Silverlight. In addition, Adobe Flash and AIR can also be used on the Linux platform. Unlike Silverlight, I have not made any mistake in using Flash or Air technology websites that cannot be accessed by Linux.

Novell promises that it will launch a multimedia player using Moonlight in the future. This player will be built on its existing music player Banshee. Personally, I like Banshee very much, so I will always pay attention to the next Novell player.

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