Moonlight shines on Linux desktop

WALTHAM, USA: The Mono Project, an open source initiative sponsored by Novell, today announced the availability of Moonlight 1.0. The first open source project that provides Linux users access to Microsoft* Silverlight content, Moonlight demonstrates Novell’s commitment to making Linux a first-class platform for multimedia and Rich Internet Applications.

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Moonlight provides the platform Linux users need to use Silverlight and Windows Media content. In combination with Banshee, a Novell-sponsored project to produce an open source media player, Moonlight is part of a complete multimedia solution on Linux.

“Microsoft Silverlight offers the most comprehensive and powerful solution for the creation and delivery of rich internet applications and media experiences, and is used by hundreds of thousands of developers worldwide,” said Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the .NET Developer Division at Microsoft Corp.

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“We have worked with the Moonlight team and Novell to enable interoperability between Windows and Linux platforms and extend the high-quality interactive Web and video experience for the benefit of the Linux community,” added Guthrie.

Available for all major Linux distributions, including openSUSE, SUSE Linux Enterprise, Fedora, Red Hat, and Ubuntu, this release is in part a result of the existing technical collaboration between Microsoft and Novell that extends interoperability between Windows and Linux.

“Moonlight brings the benefits of Silverlight’s popular multimedia content to Linux viewers,” said Miguel de Icaza, Mono project founder and Developer Platform vice president at Novell. “This first release delivers on the goal of breaking down barriers to multimedia content and creating parity in the user’s viewing experience regardless of whether the user is on Windows or Linux.”

The Moonlight 1.0 release is part of a technical collaboration announced by Novell and Microsoft in September of 2007. Microsoft has provided Novell with access to its test suites for Silverlight, and provides Linux end users of Moonlight with free access to the Microsoft Media Pack, a set of licensed media codecs for video and audio.