Since 2007, Microsoft Silverlight has been an option for developers looking to create and present rich content on the Web. It’s used for games, videos, embedded players, and more. Unfortunately for Linux users, there is no official Linux version of Silverlight.
However, Novell and others are working on a Linux port, called Moonlight. Moonlight is in constant development (and Silverlight seems to reach a new version every year or so), so maintaining and up-to-date installation, especially via your distribution’s package manager, isn’t always easy.
If you use Ubuntu, for instance, there is are plugins available for Mozilla-based browsers, but it is only at version 2.3, while Silverlight is currently at version 4, and even Moonlight itself is releasing preview versions of version 4 for Linux.
What to do? Simple. Get it from the source.
Note: if you are running a version of Firefox prior to version 4, and don’t mind running an older version of Moonlight, you can install it with the following command (in Ubuntu):
sudo apt-get install moonlight-plugin-mozilla
This will add a couple of requirements, and should procede as shown:
