11.30.08
Is Silverlight About ‘Killing’ GNU/Linux?
It killed kwin for me
PERSONAL experiences are good at teaching oneself about the nuisance some Microsoft technology can bring. Such is the case with Silverlight, whose presence forced me to restart my entire session today, with minor data losses. Yes, my whole KDE session practically became unmanageable, which is exceptionally rare (could not see an ad in Firefox, so tried Konqueror, which had it frozen, needed killing, which then brought down kwin.). This happened after I had received the following message from another regular reader who experienced difficulties:
I’ve seen the interminable battles about whether Silverlight is supported by Linux (aka “is Moonlight the same as Silverlight?”). Try this experiment. See this page:
http://www.parismatch.com/parismatch/Dans-l-oeil-de-match/Rep…
Hopefully, you will find an advert for a Windows mobile device made by Samsung. If you click the link for the advert, it redirects you to a page on Microsoft.com for the full spiel:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/startdoingmore/…
I notice that some text at the top says “CE SITE EST PLUS AGRÉABLE À VOIR SOUS SILVERLIGHT INSTALLEZ-LE MAINTENANT” (i.e. This site is better viewed under Silverlight <link>Install it now</link>) I tried to “install it now” under my Linux-based Konqueror browser and it told me that “My hardware or operating system are unsupported.” That should put to rest the silly debate about whether Moonlight is the same as Silverlight (it’s obviously not!) and about whether Silverlight is supported under Linux (again, it is obviously not supported under Linux!) Anyone who disagrees can easily repeat the test above and see for themselves (bonus points if they actually have Moonlight installed, which I don’t.)
People need to abolish Silverlight, whose only supporters are Microsoft and Novell (virtually the same entity these days). Moonlight is not Silverlight for GNU/Linux [1, 2] and both plug-ins need to be fought away [1, 2, 3, 4] while still in their digital diapers.
What was Samsung doing with Silverlight anyway? Samsung, as we have shown many times before, is close to Microsoft not only because it stabbed Linux with a ludicrous patent deal. Those two companies collaborate a lot and then there’s also Korea's trouble with Windows lock-in to take into consideration. Samsung is one of the largest business entities in Korea, but a very corrupt one nonetheless. █
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Goblin said,
November 30, 2008 at 5:09 am
Interesting article.
I remember the olympics being broadcast with Silverlight on a major USA site, only for it to be droped a little while after.
Here in the UK, the BBC site does not use it, and infact its running its own player project with Ubuntu. (which is good because the BBC player site, is one of the best examples of online TV and is very popular)
I have no real “discoveries” of the Silverlight, as the sites I visit dont pimp it. I, like many many other users simply have no use for it. At least people are aware of it.
I would like to think Silverbloat has had enough bad PR for people to be wary of it. Its certainly not got the mainstream deployment that MS would have liked, and I would hope this time next year it will all but be a distance memory of another unsucessful MS lockin attempt.
Im sure there will be a place for it with Windows 7 though, and I think by the time that particular binary slug slops onto the market, MS’s lucrative customer base will be severely depleated.
Could I also just say a big thank you to the people who decided to spam up my email with offensive material as a result of my emails identification here (via my blog). You shillers are really desperate. Some of the emails take a more sinister tone, and if it continues I will be reporting the matter. I will say that only once.
aeshna23 said,
November 30, 2008 at 8:04 am
I use Fedora and I didn’t run into any browser issue with the Silverlight site. My experience is that Linux is better than Windows at stopping pointless crashing, and I have absolute confidence that Linux programmers can beat any MS effort to deliberately crash Linux. MS can’t be dumb enough to go there. So, we should put your browser crash in the realm of the accidental.
The Samsung issue brings up an important issue. What hardware manufacturers should I boycott because they are too much in bed in MS? Are there hardware manufacturers I should tend to favor.
Roy Schestowitz said,
November 30, 2008 at 8:36 am
aeshna23,
Do you suggest that some sort of index ought to be compiled? I think it was advised last year.
aeshna23 said,
November 30, 2008 at 8:58 am
I suppose an index could be compiled, but how could we ever weight such an index? Perhaps, a short paragraph on the pro and the cons of each company would be better?
At the bottom of whatever is done, I suggest a link to http://waste-reduction.suite101.com/article.cfm/environmental_hazards_of_electronic_waste just to remind people that maybe it would be better not to buy something, unless they really need it.
I could help and do some work and investigate the companies, or at least investigate other people’s investigation.
Roy Schestowitz said,
November 30, 2008 at 9:23 am
It’s difficult to rank companies. One thing I could do trivially is assign recent (and relevant) articles to each company like Broadcom, Samsung, etc., letting people draw their own conclusions with regard to F/OSS friendliness.
ml2mst said,
December 1, 2008 at 12:49 am
[quote]Yes, my whole KDE session practically became unmanageable, which is exceptionally rare (could not see an ad in Firefox, so tried Konqueror, [b]which had it frozen[/b], needed killing, which then brought down kwin[/quote]
Hehe, I wonder if DFS’s Freeze-script will catch this