are there any gotchas for hosting a Silverlight app on a Linux server?

Question

I'm building a new Silverlight app for a photography studio. I was about to say "you have to have a Windows-based server hosting it" and then I thought, wait is that right? Looks like it's not. So I could point him toward a Linux host.

I know you have to register the MIME types (from a different SO thread). Are there any other caveats or gotchas that I need to know about? Assume for a second that I know next to nothing about Linux.

Edit: what if the app needs to talk to a database (mySQL)? Seems like I'd need to have Moonlight to get that going, which isn't gonna fly.

Answer 1

There is nothing blocking you to host a Silverlight app(Client Plug-in) in any webserver on any platform.

Answer 2

The only thing you have to do is ensure the web server delivers the correct MIME type for the .xap (which is application/x-silverlight-app). That's it.

Answer 3

Silverlight is client technology. There is nothign (but MIME types) that are required to host on non-MS servers. But if you have server-side code (e.g. web services or REST API's talking to your mySQL db), that server-side technology would need to work on Linux. That's completely separate from Silverlight. You might want to do the server stuff with Java or PHP (or other Linux-friendly platform) but Silverlight doesn't care what it talks to and can be served in a non-MS platform easily.

Answer 4

Regarding your edit (on mysql) -- no you would not need Moonlight (as that is client only as well). You'd need to expose your database functionality through a service layer of sorts as Shawn notes.