Microsoft Silverlight Linux

The equivalent of Microsoft's Silverlight but for Linux operating systems is available for download as of May 13, 2008, under the label Moonlight. According to the official description of the technology, Moonlight is nothing more than the open source implementation of Silverlight, tailored for UNIX systems. With this latest step in the evolution of Silverlight, Microsoft can finally claim that the technology is truly cross-platform, because ahead of the May 13 public release of Moonlight, support was available exclusively for Windows and Mac OS X operating systems.

Last week, Microsoft officials said a Linux client for Silverlight was a possibility but that Linux on the desktop paled in market share to Windows and Macintosh, where Silverlight is being. Novell continues to trail Microsoft with its own implementation of Silverlight for the Linux open-source operating system. While the Redmond company has released Silverlight 2 RTW in 2008,.

Moonlight is a project developed in parallel with Microsoft Silverlight, but not by the Redmond company. In fact, Microsoft partnered with Mono, an open source project backed by Novell, in order to port Silverlight to Linux. At this point in time Moonlight is still in development, and as such comes with the inherent problems associated with any Beta.

'The release comes in two forms: no-media codecs supported, but easy to install. This currently hosts builds for Linux x86 and x86-64 for Firefox. [And] source-code compilation, but you can optionally compile FFMpeg codecs yourself. To do this, download our moon-0.6.tar.bz2. And follow the build instructions', revealed Miguel de Icaza, Novell Vice President for Developer Technologies.

De Icaza noted that Moonlight is designed to integrate seamlessly with both Firefox 2.0 and Firefox 3.0 releases, but that the latest modifications introduced in the development of version 3.0 of Mozilla's open source browser will cause the open source implementation of Silverlight for Linux to malfunction. At this point in time Mono is offering both Moonlight 1.0 and 2.0 versions, adapted to correspond to Microsoft's own Silverlight 1.0 and 2.0 releases.

'Moonlight supports 'windowless' mode, a mechanism that allows Silverlight content to blend with other HTML elements on a page. This is only supported by Firefox 3, users of older versions of Firefox might run into Silverlight applications and web sites that do not work correctly as many Silverlight applications depend on this functionality (Flash sites have the same problem with Firefox 2)', de Icaza added.

Novel Moonlight 1.0 and 2.0 Alpha are available for download here.

Pipelight is project that brings Silverlight to any Linux browser that supports the Netscape Plugin API. Using it, you can use services that require Silverlight, such as Netflix, in native Linux web browsers like Firefox, Chrome or Midori.

Pipelight combines the effort by Erich E. Hoover (the Netflix Desktop developer) with a new browser plugin which - unlike Netflix Desktop which requires a Windows version of Firefox to run under Wine -, lets you access services that require Microsoft Silverlight using native Linux web browsers.

This solution isn't Wine-free because the browser plugin continues to use Wine however, this shouldn't have a big impact on performance:

'Pipelight consists out of two parts: A Linux library which is loaded into the browser and a Windows program started in Wine. The Windows program, called pluginloader.exe, simply simulates a browser and loads the Silverlight DLLs. When you open a page with a Silverlight application the library will send all commands from the browser through a pipe to the Windows process and act like a bridge between your browser and Silverlight. The used pipes do not have any big impact on the speed of the rendered video since all the video and audio data is not send through the pipe. Only the initialization parameters and (sometimes) the network traffic is send through them.'

According to the Pipelight website, the plugin has been confirmed to work 'almost perfectly' using Microsoft Silverlight 5 for the following websites: Maxdome, Netflix and Sumo 2.

I've tested Pipelight with Netflix, under Chrome (Ubuntu 13.10) and I can confirm it works (and the playback was smooth!), as you can see in the screenshots in this article. Update: I've also tested it with Firefox and it works, but sometimes the browser freezes, something which doesn't happen with Chrome so I recommend using Chrome / Chromium with Pipelight.

Install Pipelight in Ubuntu

Important update: starting with version 35, Google Chrome no longer supports NPAPI plugins so Pipelight won't work in Chrome!

Before proceeding, it's strongly recommended to close your web browser. Without doing this, the plugin may fail to install or crash the browser (you can copy the instructions below to a text editor).

1.If you've installed the old Pipelight version, remove it before proceeding:

To add the Pipelight stable and Compholio PPAs and install Pipelight in Ubuntu, use the following commands:

Then, you can install the Silverlight plugin using the following command:
- system-wide:
- for your user only:

By default, this will install Silverlight 5.1, but you can install a different version, for instane 5.0, by using this command instead (don't use 'sudo' if you don't want to install it system-wide):

What Is Microsoft Silverlight Mac

Once installed, start your browser and try THIS test Silverlight applet. If it doesn't work, check if Silverlight is available in your browser plugin list (e.g.: you can type 'about:plugins' in the address bar).

Update 1: Pipelight now also supports installing the Windows version of Adobe Flash. To install the Windows version of Adobe Flash, use this command:

- system-wide
- for your user only:

Update 2: Pipelight now supports Widevine. To enable Widevine, use the command below:

- system-wide:
- for your user only:

If you didn't close the browser before proceeding with the installation and Silverlight doesn't work, run the following command:

and then restart the browser.
Microsoft Silverlight Linux

Update 3: Pipelight now also supports installing the ViewRight Caiway plugin and the Vizzed RGR plugin.
To install the ViewRight Caiway plugin, use the commands below:
- system-wide:
- for your user only:
To install the Vizzed RGR plugin, use the commands below:
- system-wide:
- for your user only:
Update 4: Pipelight now supports installing Unity3D. To install it, use the commands below:
- system-wide:
- for your user only:

2. We're not done yet. Silverlight should be working now, but some websites such as Netflix check the browser user agent and won't allow you to play any videos since Linux isn't supported. A work-around for this is to use a browser user agent switcher:

Firefox: install UAControl or User Agent Overrider extensions and use one of the following user agents:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:15.0) Gecko/20120427 Firefox/15.0a1
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:22.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/22.0
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:23.0) Gecko/20131011 Firefox/23.0

Chrome: install User Agent Switcher extension and select Windows Firefox 15 from the extension preferences.

Microsoft Silverlight Linux

That's it! If video playback is slow or laggy, try THIS work-around.

Update 5: Pipelight can now check your system for common issues which could prevent it from working. To run the Pipelight system check tool, use this command:

Some information about common issues can be found HERE.
Microsoft silverlight linux

Installing other Pipelight plugins

Pipelight is constantly getting support for new plugins. To see a complete list of plugins supported by Pipelight, run the following command:

To enable a plugin, simply run the following command:
(where 'pluginname' is the name of the plugin you want to enable/install)

Some of these plugins need to be 'unlocked' first (this will create some extra file consuming some disk space) - for such plugins, an error will be displayed, telling you to run the following command:

(where 'pluginname' is the name of the plugin you want to enable/install)
Moonlight linux

Also see:

Microsoft Silverlight Linux Ubuntu

For more information, Arch Linux installation instructions, source files and so on, visit Pipelight installation page.