Can You Run Silverlight on a Chromebook or Linux?
The short answer
No. There is no supported way to run Microsoft Silverlight on a Chromebook or on a Linux desktop today, and there never really was an official one. Microsoft shipped the Silverlight browser runtime for Windows and Mac only, and the whole product reached end of support on October 12, 2021. Whatever workaround you may remember from years ago, the pieces it depended on are gone on every side: the plugin, the plugin API in the browser, and Microsoft's support for the runtime itself.
Why a Chromebook can't run it
A Chromebook runs ChromeOS, and its browser is Chrome. Silverlight was an NPAPI plugin — a native module the browser loads into itself — and Google removed NPAPI support from Chrome entirely, finishing the removal in September 2015. That removal applies to Chrome everywhere, including ChromeOS. There is no setting, flag, or extension that restores plugin support, because the code that loaded plugins no longer exists in the browser. Anything in an extension store claiming to "enable Silverlight on Chromebook" cannot actually do that; the deeper reasons are covered in why Silverlight won't run in modern browsers.
Installing Linux apps on a Chromebook doesn't change the picture either, for the reasons below.
Why Firefox on Ubuntu can't run it
For a while, Linux users leaned on Firefox because Firefox kept NPAPI support longer than Chrome did. That door closed too. Mozilla announced the end of NPAPI plugin support, and the Firefox 52 release notes record the removal of support for NPAPI plugins such as Silverlight and Java from the mainstream release in 2017. Every current Firefox on Ubuntu, Fedora, or any other distribution is many versions past that point. Even before the removal, Microsoft's own Silverlight installer targeted Windows and Mac, so Linux users were already relying on unofficial shims rather than the real runtime.
What about a Windows virtual machine?
The only environment where Silverlight content can still technically render is an old, plugin-capable Internet Explorer on Windows — and Internet Explorer 11 has itself been retired by Microsoft. Some organizations keep a locked-down Windows virtual machine around solely to reach one legacy internal app. That is an organizational stopgap with real security tradeoffs, not something to set up casually on a personal Chromebook; the risks of keeping Silverlight deployed apply just as much to the machine doing the viewing.
The realistic options
- If it's a public website: contact the site owner. Most services that once required Silverlight have since replaced it with standard HTML5 video or web apps; if this one hasn't, no browser you install will fix that.
- If it's your organization's internal app: the answer is migration, not a browser hunt. Modern replacements run plugin-free in every browser — including on Chromebooks — using standard technologies like WebAssembly.
- If you're evaluating that migration: start by cataloging what the old app actually does, as described in how to inventory a Silverlight app.
The frustrating part of the Chromebook question is that the fix isn't on your device at all. Silverlight content is stranded on the publisher's side, and only the publisher can un-strand it.