As reported here earlier today, the release edition of SuSE Enterprise Linux 11 announced today is the first commercial product to feature Moonlight 1.0, the Linux-based runtime for Web sites released last month, geared to show video and graphics for Microsoft Silverlight 1.0.

But another of the immediate benefits that Linux users will be seeing is that sites with built-in WMV format videos, may play using Moonlight 1.0. For many users, it will be the first step toward something resembling ubiquity, as Linux users -- who note there aren't many, if any, sites developed "for Linux" -- will at last be able to run Web sites that clearly give off the appearance of having been developed "for Windows."

The next step for Moonlight is the ability to run managed code, specifically in C#, made for Silverlight 2.0 Web sites that are running now. The Mono Project -- the Novell- and Microsoft-backed group building .NET platform components for Linux -- is just a few days overdue in announcing the official alpha test stage for Moonlight 2.0, though Betanews has seen impressive demonstrations of existing code from lead developer Miguel de Icaza as early as last October. The first betas of Moonlight 2.0 are due in mid-May.

Today's SuSE release comes as Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian, speaking today at an Open Source Business Conference keynote in San Francisco, told attendees that he believed users everywhere needed to become accustomed, if they weren't already, to life in a world where both Windows and Linux co-exist. "We're going to be living in this dual world whether we like it or not," Hovsepian is quoted as saying.