re: Just say no

Mark Davies — Tue, 20 May 2008 19:33:52 GMT

Silverlight shows up in the Feature packs, so it's clearly seperated out from patches. I've installed it on the clients for pretty much the same reasons Alex mentioned. Using WSUS 3.0 SP1 I can decline the update, in which case it goes away but if I only apporve it for one group (Pc's rather than servers) it sits there forever on my failed or needed list showing partially approved. There doesn't seem to be a way to partially decline it. I do want it on PC's I can't find any good reason to install it on servers however.

re: Just say no

Alex Robar — Tue, 20 May 2008 15:06:28 GMT

Is there a good reason NOT to put Silverlight on there though? The only excuse I've heard so far is the old standby of "keep your PCs clean". And that's an OK argument, but what do you do when your users actually need to view a Silverlight-enabled website? Adobe's Flash goes onto our managed workstations by default since so many sites require it. It's far easier to deploy it from the IT side and manage that deployment instead of having the users try to install it themselves when prompted, and then generating dozens of calls to the help desk when they realize they don't have permissions to do so.

Silverlight might not be as popular as Flash right now, but I'd rather be prepared and let my users have the ability to view this content versus them flooding the help desk when they find a site that needs it. Unless there's a significant security threat presented by Silverlight, it doesn't seem reasonable to just block its deployment across the board.

Unless, of course, your qualm isn't with the software itself, but instead with the fact that it's being presented as an update (much like the Safari debacle).