Moonlight 2.0 Preview is Out and Why You Should Care

Microsoft Silverlight
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Moonlight is a Novell-sponsored Linux implementation of Microsoft Silverlight, which is Microsoft‘s equivalent of Adobe Flash. We hate the idea of websites we can’t use, and like the idea of Linux-plugins that correct this. However, there is one show-stopping app for Moonlight: Netflix.

The Netflix Watch Instantly system is not supported under Linux, mostly because it uses Silverlight. It is particularly odd, as we know it could be supported under Linux. The Roku NetFlix/Video Player is Linux-based. Silverlight itself does not have the market-share Adobe Flash does, and we are thus surprised by Netflix’s choice.

The latest version of Moonlight, 2.0 preview, supports Silverlight 2.0, which is necessary for Netflix, but does not support the DRM stack, which is necessary for Netflix to run. We have high hopes this wll come someday. Until then, we guess we are limited to Flash-based web media.

Moonlight 2.0 Preview is available as a Firefox plugin for both 32 and 64-bit Linux distributions.

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1 thought on “Moonlight 2.0 Preview is Out and Why You Should Care”

  1. Hey, I found this post while looking for help with Microsoft Silverlight. I have recently changed browsers from Google Chrome to Mozilla Firefox 3.1. After the change I seem to have a issue with loading sites that have Microsoft Silverlight. Every time I go on a website that requires Microsoft Silverlight, the site crashes and I get a “npctrl.dll” error. I cannot seem to find out how to fix it. Any help getting Microsoft Silverlight to work is very appreciated! Thanks

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