CB and MB on Ubuntu?

[AbdulAlhazred]

Is it? It says Status=NEW when I open the link above...

Anyway, I think the problem is Moonlight will always be a little behind on the feature curve. WotC is using Silverlight 4 in their applications and I don't think Moonlight is up to that level yet.

Yeah, I think the chance that Moonlight will ever support CB/MB is approximately zero. MS is now in the process of ditching Silverlight anyway, so chances are Moonlight development is going to go to a back burner.

OP, you can run Windows using VirtualBox. It is every bit as good as VMWare workstation/player at this point (maybe not as efficient, I don't know, but it definitely supports all the features you'll ever likely need). The only problem I've run into is that not every little sub-version of Windows seems to actually RUN on every version of VBox under all kernels. For instance I can't for the life of me even get 64 bit win 7 to install on 64 bit Linux no matter what. Even existing installs just BSOD during bootup. OTOH it worked flawlessly under my 32 bit kernel.

 

[Oldtimer]

MS is now in the process of ditching Silverlight anyway, ...

I hear this rumour a lot. Have you seen any actual statement from MS supporting this? I'm a MS certified developer working at a MS Gold Partner application development company, and I haven't seen such a statement.

 

[D'karr]

I hear this rumour a lot. Have you seen any actual statement from MS supporting this? I'm a MS certified developer working at a MS Gold Partner application development company, and I haven't seen such a statement.

What Microsoft has said is that they have shifted their strategy with Silverlight. Silverlight 4, the current version has not had an end of lifecycle notice posted, and according to the Dev agreement with MS, MS must give developers a 12 month "heads-up" when it plan to discontinue support for SL4. SL5 is about to go RTM and it "seems" like it might be the last version of Silverlight produced.

You can read more about this here and here

So is Silverlight dead? Not yet, and probably not for a while. Will it be a dead end? It looks like "eventually", yes. How long "eventually" is anyone's guess.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

What Microsoft has said is that they have shifted their strategy with Silverlight. Silverlight 4, the current version has not had an end of lifecycle notice posted, and according to the Dev agreement with MS, MS must give developers a 12 month "heads-up" when it plan to discontinue support for SL4. SL5 is about to go RTM and it "seems" like it might be the last version of Silverlight produced.

You can read more about this here and here

So is Silverlight dead? Not yet, and probably not for a while. Will it be a dead end? It looks like "eventually", yes. How long "eventually" is anyone's guess.

Well, clearly 'dead', particularly with MS, doesn't mean "poof it vanishes from existence". They're not going to supply new dev tools for it past SL5, and presumably they're not going to add new features etc and eventually they'll EOL the entire runtime. They're likely to continue to provide the existing tool support until then as well, or at least up to some release of MSVS in the same time frame. That could be 5 years from now, but likely it will be somewhat sooner.

Clearly SL will remain an option for people that are determined to stick with what works for them for quite some time. It is just going to be in the same category with various older toolsets that will still WORK if you use them and that runtime support continues to possible for. It is just going to be a better idea to move on to whatever is next as soon as it becomes feasible.

Really, my impression of MS's current development platform strategy is that it is a bit 'confused' at the moment. Clearly SL was envisaged as a long-term strategy and now it is equally clearly no longer so. It is even rather unclear exactly where they are positioning .NET and managed code in general going forward. From what we can tell it is likely to follow Java into the abyss of "server side technology" with some limited support for client facing apps if you're really determined. Whatever is coming next is hard to fathom, some mix of native code and HTML5 based tools. Maybe the IE10 runtime will become basically the runtime for 'managed' non-native type stuff going forward. Who really knows? I'm not sure MS knows.

 

[vagabundo]

Well the end is in sight anyway. WotC will have to move from silverlight at some stage in the future.

WotC please please choose something that works across all OSs, even if you dont "support" it on linux.

 

[DarkLord Of DForce]

Amen!

 

[drothgery]

Well the end is in sight anyway. WotC will have to move from silverlight at some stage in the future.

It's pretty trivial to port a Silverlight app to a WinRT/Windows 8 app.

 

[Scribble]

Well the end is in sight anyway. WotC will have to move from silverlight at some stage in the future.

WotC please please choose something that works across all OSs, even if you dont "support" it on linux.

Hah... so sometime in 2036 then?