

Not too soon: Moonlight 2 finally reaches beta - erlik
http://www.tech-no-media.com/2009/08/not-too-soon-moonlight-2-finally.html

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bad_user
From the article: _Since Adobe releases Flash runtimes simultaneously on
Windows, Mac and Linux, the minimum that Microsoft needs to offer to be
credible is the same simultaneous release schedule._

This statement is erroneous to some extent. Flash 7 for Linux was of dubious
quality, Flash 8.x for Linux was skipped altogether, and Flash 9 wasn't
released simultaneously with the Windows/Mac versions.

Linux is a second-class citizen for Adobe ... of course, they have reasons to
not consider Linux. But there's no guarantee from the history of the project
that this level of support will be continued in later versions.

Also, Moonlight is not a Microsoft project. It's an open-source project
sponsored by Novell and it is in a better shape than any Flash-clone
available. This is very important to me ... it means that it's portable to any
platform available (you don't depend on Adobe in any way), and it also means
that you have an open community willing to help. Also, some of the features in
Silverlight 3.0 are already in Moonlight (like the pluggable codecs).

I must warn the curious that Moonlight currently has some
stability/performance issues.

~~~
jdowdell
Flash has been on Linux longer than you think:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20000815054538/www.macromedia.com...](http://web.archive.org/web/20000815054538/www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/alternates/)

Player 8 skipped Linux because it was an interim release with a better
graphics engine, and was replaced shortly by Player 9 with a faster logic
engine. Unfortunately this was during the same time that YouTube first became
popular. Historical notes here:
[http://blogs.adobe.com/jd_archive/archives/2006/08/linux_obs...](http://blogs.adobe.com/jd_archive/archives/2006/08/linux_observati.html)

"Linux is a second-class citizen for Adobe" Nah. There's not much chance of
revenue for Creative Suite porting, but tools like Flex Builder, and runtimes
like AIR, all bring Linux to parity... for instance:
[http://blogs.adobe.com/jd_archive/archives/2008/03/what_airl...](http://blogs.adobe.com/jd_archive/archives/2008/03/what_airlinux_m.html)
[http://blogs.adobe.com/jd/2009/05/linux_journal_readers_choi...](http://blogs.adobe.com/jd/2009/05/linux_journal_readers_choice_a.html)
[http://blogs.adobe.com/jd_archive/archives/2007/10/flex_buil...](http://blogs.adobe.com/jd_archive/archives/2007/10/flex_builder_li_1.html)

The explosive thing is next year's devices -- both mobile and home wallscreens
-- which use Linux operating systems in higher proportion than do laptops.
Check out openscreenproject.org for context on how important Linux has become
at Adobe.

------
ilyak
Yet noone cares.

However, if you showed me a flash plugin that won't crash, would work with
every browser (including my Konqueror) and wouldn't eat 99% CPU, I'll go WOW
all over.

Because Flash is everything. Youtube. Conference videos. Anything else, you
name it.

