Linux Silverlight Goes Live Destroys My Linux Netbook
Aside from my MacBookpro, I have a Dell D600 which served a purpose about 3 years ago. Luckily it is now repurposed as a Linux Netbook running gOS 3.1, a version of Ubuntu Linux specifically tailored to maximise the Google Experience on a laptop. It also however attempts to follow design elements from the Mac including the dock and widgets. What I mostly use it for is an alternative media streaming tool to listen to NPR, watch TV online or browsing. Unfortunately when you attempt to use it for TV watching you smack straight into Microsoft’s attempt to unseat Adobe Flash at the default video streaming technology.
Microsoft has attempted to break Flash’s dominance by paying media companies to embed their technology into their online offerings over Flash technology. This has resulted in Linux being locked out of areas including some Discovery Channel and NBC offerings.
Aside from the fact that Silverlight is a completely redundant technology, I saw that the Novell Mono project has released a version of Silverlight for Linux called Moonlight. This resulted in me mistakenly downloading and installing the Firefox plugin to allow me to watch Landrover G4 Challenge.
After installing the plugin, a dutifully restarted Firefox and hell broke lose. Firefox would not restart, sorry would not stay started. The plugin kept crashing the browser. I then had to google around to figure out how to delete the plugin. My response was to delete the plugin from the Firefox plugin directory, which I did and Firefox restarted normally.
Then a strange thing happened, my sound card stopped working. After some more googling, and a lesson on the difference betwee ALSA and OSS, I attempted to restore my sound card settings which failed miserably.
Thank god gOS is incredibly easy to reinstall……
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[...] Shivendu Madhava wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptAfter installing the plugin, a dutifully restarted Firefox and hell broke lose. Firefox would not restart, sorry would not stay started. The plugin kept crashing the browser. I then had to google around to figure out how to delete the … [...]
Hi KiwiBloke,
As one of the developers of Moonlight, I would have very much liked to have gotten a bug report from you with backtraces of the crash so that I could have fixed the problem. If you decide to try Moonlight again in the future and experience such a crash, please report it to our bugzilla at http://bugzilla.novell.com so that we can fix it.
Thanks,
Jeff
I installed Moonlight 1.0 from http://go-mono.com/moonlight on gOS 3.1 today without any problems as you described. Did you file a bug to get the solution fixed?
I successfully installed the codec pack and watched video from http://silverlight.net/fox
Considering moonlight never touches any ALSA settings, and doesn’t even speak to OSS at all, compounded with the fact that every since instance of the G4 challenge that I can find requires flash, it begs the question as to the validity of your post.
The problem with filing a bug is that I could not get back into firefox to find anything useful to actually file. Firefox would restart then immediately crash.
As for G4 Challenge
http://watch.discoverychannel.ca
then click on Video Library > G4 Challenge.
it is Silverlight.
I have not seen ANY full episodes anywhere else.
But hey thanks for you comment.
Kiwi,
If you would like to help with the problem:
1> Close all firefox instances
2> Start firefox with the profile manager (firefox -ProfileManager)
3> Create a new profile
4> Install moonlight into the profile
5> Start firefox in the new profile in gdb (firefox -p ProfileName -no-remote -d gdb)
6> Get the stack trace when it crashes and file a bug using your main profile.
Its worth noting I have tried Moonlight on gOS under a number of configurations today, so I’m not entirely sure moonlight is to blame, or what exactly is going on. Is it possible you have some other extension conflicting? When you say firefox kept crashing were you “restoring” session or starting a new one? If you were “restoring” what page were you attempting to navigate to when you got the initial crash?
I have got in the practice of Google for problem before I install stuff. It seems like there are some software and plugins that go crazy causing all sorts of problems. Most of the time I can get an idea before I upgrade.
Must have been some problem because you don’t expect so many series of problems with a single install. I will have to check out Moonlight and your problem may be solved when you get Google Chrome OS as well
. gOS looks solid and beautiful but I don’t use Google services too much on Linux though and prefer Linux Mint (ubuntu based distribution) over other distributions. It has really come far and a good way for beginners to start on Linux.