Moonlight Shines on the Linux Desktop

Novell announces first open source implementation of Microsoft Silverlight

WALTHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Mono® Project, an open-source initiative sponsored by Novell, today announced the availability of Moonlight^TM 1.0. The first and only 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. Moonlight provides the platform Linux users need to use Silverlight and Windows* Media content. In combination with Banshee^TM, a Novell-sponsored project to produce an open source media player, Moonlight is part of a complete multimedia solution on Linux.

“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.”

“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. “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.”

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. Windows Media Video (.wmv), Windows Media Audio (.wma) and MP3 files are supported through the Microsoft Media Pack, a Microsoft-delivered set of media codecs that brings optimized and licensed decoders to every Linux user using Moonlight. Additionally, it allows developers to write Rich Internet Applications for multiple platforms.

Moonlight has already proven useful to tens of thousands of Linux users. A pre-release of Moonlight was delivered on January 19, 2009 to allow Linux users to stream Barack Obama's Inauguration. More than 20,000 Linux users downloaded Moonlight to watch the Silverlight broadcast.

“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.

For more information on Moonlight, visit go-mono.com/moonlight. To learn more about open source projects that Novell sponsors and contributes to, visit www.novell.com/linux/opensource.

About the Mono Project

The Mono Project is an open source initiative sponsored by Novell to develop a UNIX* version of the Microsoft .NET development framework. Hosted at www.mono-project.com, the Mono project provides all the necessary software to develop and run .NET client and server applications on Linux, Solaris*, Mac* OS X*, Windows and Unix. Mono has an active and enthusiastic contributing community and is positioned to become the leading choice for development of Linux applications.

About Novell

Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) delivers the best engineered, most interoperable Linux platform and a portfolio of integrated IT management software that helps customers around the world reduce cost, complexity and risk. With our infrastructure software and ecosystem of partnerships, Novell harmoniously integrates mixed IT environments, allowing people and technology to work as one. For more information, visit www.novell.com.

Novell, Mono, openSUSE and SUSE are registered trademarks and Banshee and Moonlight are trademarks of Novell, Inc. in the United States and other countries. *All third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.