[CALUG] moonlight ( silverlight) plus codecs ?

[Jeremy Bicha]

On 22 April 2011 15:36, Walt Smith <waltechmail at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Just wondering if anyone has tried Silverlight" equivalent
> for Linux from the mono site, and also D/L'd the codecs ?
> ( or hazard a good guess as to how they work
> so you don't have to admit you actually got them offshore ).
>
> some questions would be:
> if the codecs are D/L'd, are they the same codecs as normally available
> online,
> possibly offshore, for  the other media apps on linux such as mplayer,
> Totem, Rhythmbox  etc ?
>
> Would those same MS codecs that would be D/L'd be useful in the linux apps
> such as those mentioned for media or other linux OS apps ?  For better or
> Worse ?
> or are the codecs mono C# runtime vm code only  ?
>
> Walt........
>
> ===================================
>
> What is Moonlight?
>
> Moonlight was built by Novell in collaboration with Microsoft which provided
> Novell with test suites, specifications, open source code and Media Codecs
> to create an entirely open sourced Silverlight-compatible implementation for
> Unix systems.
> Access to licensed Media Codecs (MP3, WMV, VC-1) is provided by Microsoft to
> Moonlight 1.0 and 2.0 users. The first time that you access a web site that
> requires these codecs, Moonlight will prompt you to download the codecs from
> Microsoft and install those on your system.

Moonlight is sponsored by Novell and is an open source implementation
of Microsoft's proprietary Silverlight for use on Linux (as seen even
in the blurb you posted in this email). It does not need to be hosted
off-shore as it's not even a little bit illegal. Novell has
Microsoft's cooperation in this. For instance, as I do not have
Moonlight installed (because only a few websites bother using
Silverlight) and I visit http://www.silverlight.net/ which is operated
by Microsoft and click "Install", I get redirected to Moonlight's
website since it can tell that I am a Linux user.

Yes, Moonlight is part of the Mono project, but it's a web browser
plugin, not a set of codecs so this is not something that I would
expect to see integrated into your media players.

If you have a need for Moonlight, I'd recommend the not-yet-stable
Moonlight 4 Preview instead of the Moonlight 2 packaged in many
distros. On the other hand, it's easiest to install from your distro's
repositories. Like I said before, most people have no need for
Silverlight/Moonlight. I sure don't.

Jeremy Bicha