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GNOME GUI Software Linux

Fedora Core 5 includes Mono 463

Posted by CmdrTaco from the fedora-core-six-will-be-in-stereo dept.
cyberjessy writes "Surprise! The Fedora Core 5 Release will include Mono in the distribution, in spite of Red Hat's opposition. In addition to the Mono runtime, it will also include Mono applications like Beagle and F-Spot. Is the Linux community finally ready to accept Mono? Mono is becoming increasing important due to Windows Vista, which has WinFX (the next .Net Framework) as its core API. This will mean that in future, all native Windows applications will easily run on Linux, with Mono. Will Mono achieve what WINE could not?"
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Fedora Core 5 includes Mono

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  • Summary (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Locarius ( 798304 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @09:31AM (#14435021)
    Yes, off topic, but it's nice to see a well written and concise topic summary around here once in a while.

    • Re:Summary (Score:5, Insightful)

      by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @09:47AM (#14435115)
      Yes, off topic, but it's nice to see a well written and concise topic summary around here once in a while.
      But how accurate is it?
      This will mean that in future, all native Windows applications will easily run on Linux, with Mono.
      I think that's far premature. Without even knowing yet what the catch is, I know there will be some. I just don't think Microsoft will let Windows apps seamlessly run under Linux, one way or another.

      • Re:Summary (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Glock27 ( 446276 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @10:17AM (#14435311)
        I think that's far premature. Without even knowing yet what the catch is, I know there will be some. I just don't think Microsoft will let Windows apps seamlessly run under Linux, one way or another.

        Yes, as far as I know, there are no plans to clone "WinFX" at this point for Vista compatibility. Mono doesn't even have working WinForms as far as I know (after how many years?), which would provide compatibility with current Win apps.

        Java provides a better level of portability than C#/CLR...I'd look there instead for a VM based runtime.

        On that note, there is a Java port that runs on top of the Mono runtime and is supposedly fast. That might be worth investigating. (IronPython too if it ends up significantly faster than the regular Python interpreter.)

        • Re:Summary (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @11:00AM (#14435597) Journal
          Yes, as far as I know, there are no plans to clone "WinFX" at this point for Vista compatibility.

          WinFX is far from required for "Vista compatibility". Basically no applications will use WinFX when Vista is released, and I have to wonder how many Windows developers are actually ready to jump ship from unmanaged C++ to .NET and WinFX. The new WinFX development models with e.g. Windows Presentation Foundation and XAML for UI development, etc. are totally incompatible with current C++ applications. It feels like several years ahead at the very least.

          As for the Windows.Forms namespace, it's well underway actually. In the November 2005 status report [tirania.org], word is:
          Windows.Forms is the only piece that is holding us from officially renaming Mono to Mono 1.2, it is still missing a few features. Our plan is to complete the missing features by the end of this month and then move to bug fixing and testing open source our publicly accessible Windows.Forms applications. We are planning on spending three months on bug fixing at this point.

          This hardly sounds too unattainable to me.

          And before anyone asks, no, Windows Forms 2.0 support isn't required for "Vista compatibility" either.

  • The patent problems have not been addressed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by H4x0r Jim Duggan ( 757476 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @09:33AM (#14435037) Homepage Journal

    The strategy for dealing with patents is discussed on the Wikipedia article about Mono [wikipedia.org]. It is not a well thought out strategy.

    It's probably good that Mono exists, it may have uses in some situations. It may help people get out of .Net related lock-in, but in general it should not be built upon.

    • In Europe and in Britain, the law is quite clear: software patents are null and void. As long as development work is carried out in a software-patent-free environment, there should be no patent problems.

      I seem to recall it being fair use to make a version of something covered by a patent as long as it is for your own use. So it might well be OK just to host the download servers outside the USA.

      Of course the best strategy in the long term will be to elect representatives who oppose software patents, a

      • solidarity (Score:4, Informative)

        by H4x0r Jim Duggan ( 757476 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @10:16AM (#14435306) Homepage Journal

        People in Europe and Britain are kinda safe right now. Software patents are being granted, and are being used as the basis of litigation threats that the recipients can't afford to contest, but at least the courts are on our side, so far.

        This situation is not stable. If China, India, and Latin America bring in software patents, then Europe will probably give in at a subsequent world trade agreement.

        To keep people in Britain and Europe safe, people in Britain and Europe must take action - and one easy way to do this is to donate to competent, active groups such as FSFE [fsfeurope.org]. One way to do this is to join The Fellowship of FSFE, and also encourage others to join [fsfe.org].

        Here's a webpage about how and why to support FSFE's Fellowship campaign [compsoc.com].

      • While on the surface that might seem like a good solution, in the long run it's totally unacceptable.

        First of all, the primary users of Linux (and arguably the most important, financially) have been corporations -- running webservers, scientific projects, etc. A patent problem could easily scare them away. There's already enough FUD spreading about FOSS -- do you really want to give Microsoft more ammunition? I can just see the letter's from Microsoft's legal department already. "We have received informatio
    • It may help people get out of .Net related lock-in, but in general it should not be built upon.

      What is this .Net related lock-in that you are speaking of? In my opinion .Net is one of the best things that Microsoft has ever done. Developing has never been as easy and feature rich as it is under the .Net platform. My development time since switching to .Net is on another level than it was before; I almost cannot imagine going back. .Net is one thing that Linux should definetly embrace, I havent found a pr

      • Re:The patent problems have not been addressed (Score:5, Insightful)

        by afabbro ( 33948 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @11:22AM (#14435748) Homepage
        What is this .Net related lock-in that you are speaking of?

        Hey, I'd like to develop a .Net program and run it on Solaris/AIX/Linux/etc. Oh, I can't? Gee, seems like I'm locked in to the Windows platform with .Net.

        Compare and contrast with Java. Or open source code. Or a lot of closed-source code, for that matter. Just like Visual Basic, if you write in .Net, you're only writing for Windows.

    • Well, According to the article ASP.NET, ADO.NET and Windows Forms are the issue. There are free alternatives to all of these technologies (e.g. gnome-db, gtk#), and programmers concerned with portability should use them. Some would argue the alternatives are better.

      Programmers who aren't concerned with portability should use whatever they like best, understanding that if they go MS then they might not be able to run.

      The only suckers in this are people who use (or implement) MS proprietary APIs and assume t

    • Trust Microsoft. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Burz ( 138833 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @12:34PM (#14436642) Homepage Journal
      Miguel de Icaza: Mono BOF Proposal Turned Down By Microsoft For Second Year Running? [sys-con.com]
      "At the last PDC," Miguel de Icaza (pictured) notes, "the Mono BOF had the largest number of votes when half the spots were still available and it got dropped out of the list." Now it seems that history is about to repeat itself.

      Writing, in his blog, of last year's disappointment, he explains:

              "When I asked the various people in charge what happened they kept pointing fingers at someone else until it reached full circle. Nobody could tell me why the most voted BOF proposal did not get selected. I would be happy with an honest answer even if it is "We do not want to promote open source/Mono/Novell" instead I heard a number of variations on "The problem is that `New frontiers for 6502 assembly language in the copy-editing industry had more votes'" (it didnt)."

      This year's PDC, de Icaza fears, "is looking just like the last one. So it is time to get ready for a Mono meeting like we had the last time: in the middle of the hallway."

      Very telling entry from Miguel's own blog. [tirania.org]

      What's on display here isn't even remotely close to a cooperative spirit to further a community standard. It is more of a Cold War.

      ECMA? Who cares... ECMA trying to set the direction of C# and CLR is like steering a truck with a flea.
    • Indeed - especially considering that WINE and Mono are two very different beasts. WINE aims at binary compatibility with existing applications; Mono (from what *I* know, anyway) aims at source compatibility, which is a very different thing, and much easier to accomplish.
      • Not quite, Mono also includes a VM that interprets the .net bytecode, much like java.

      • Re:Simple question -- simple answer. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Eivind ( 15695 ) <eivindorama@gmail.com> on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @10:14AM (#14435291) Homepage
        Yeah, sure, it's something completely different from Wine. But my "no" was sorta based on something different, namely the idea that, as stated in the blurb:

        This will mean that in future, all native Windows applications will easily run on Linux, with Mono. Will Mono achieve what WINE could not?"

        Mono will certainly not ever come anywhere *close* to being able to run "all native Windows applications", there's like half a dozen independent reasons for that, ranging from your "it'd require a recompile in any case" trough unpleasant little facts like the fact that Mono is trying to chase a moving target that is willing to spend a lot of money and man-hours precicely to *avoid* that too much works with Mono.

        In sum, they'll have all the problems of Wine, and then some. (the need for sourcecode f.ex)

        Worse yet: the mono-developers are suggesting one migth want to develop OSS applications with a primary target being Free OSes under Mono. Doing so would be double hurtful: It'd ensure that any such application developed for Linux works perfectly under Windows (because mono is a *subset* of the MS-environment, AND because all OSS-applications come with source), but *not* the oposite.

        It's a braindead waste of time. I don't see how I can put it more politely. It actively hurts the Free Software ecosystem.

        • Okay, there are several areas that .Net/Mono etc encompass. First, there is the core Common Language Runtime; this is what runs a given application. The CLR is well defined within the ECMA/ISO standards, as is most of (second) the core framework. Microsoft extends the core framework with ADO.Net (command data layer) Microsoft.* (VB Compatability objects and a few others), ASP.Net (web apps, and services) allong with SWF (Windows forms).

          Mono already has the core framework, as well as compatability for
      • .Net aims for binary compatibility as well.

  • Aha! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    So Fedora Core 5 will be shipping with a virus!

  • Great news! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @09:34AM (#14435043)
    I don't really care about windows programs running on linux, though this is of course an interesting subject.

    What's more important is that the stupid infighting about what role mono could play in Gnome can now finally end.
    Mono seems to offer something that many people like and can now finally simply be used to build great programs for Gnome (just like pythong, jave, etc.), without being preoccupied with Fedora and thus a large Gnome distribution not shipping mono.

  • Heh. (Score:5, Funny)

    by SatanicPuppy ( 611928 ) <Satanicpuppy.gmail@com> on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @09:35AM (#14435050) Journal
    First time the "Kissing Disease" has ever been accessable to geeks.

    One the one hand, I'm all in favor of open source alternatives, and it adds a lot to linux to be able to run .Net apps, but I can't help but think we'd be better off with another language. .Net is so freaking encumbered.

    Still, it'd be nice to be able to host .Net apps on Linux servers...

    • Re:Heh. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Hosiah ( 849792 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @11:04AM (#14435628)
      linux to be able to run .Net apps,

      Hey...wait a minute. Do you mean Net apps like in "Visual Basic Script-Kiddies EZ Virus Kit"? Maybe this isn't something to dance in the streets about after all...

  • Will all applications be rewritten? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mwvdlee ( 775178 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @09:36AM (#14435056) Homepage
    This will mean that in future, all native Windows applications will easily run on Linux, with Mono.
    Will all major Windows applications be rewritten to .NET?
    I just can't imagine Adobe, Autodesk, Corel, etc. translating their code to .NET in the near future.

    • Re:Will all applications be rewritten? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by anarxia ( 651289 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @09:51AM (#14435150)
      All applications.. no chance. Some of them might.

      The problem is that MS (intentionally or not) left a lot of functionality out of the .NET standard libraries _AND_ made it almost trivial to call native code from within .NET.
      The end result is that most applications end up using Win32 DLLs directly so wine is still necessary.

    • This will mean that in future, all native Windows applications will easily run on Linux, with Mono.

      No it doesn't. There are still Windows classes that are additions to the .NET standard which are available for Windows and not for Mono. What about future classes tied directly to Vista and those features of it patented?

  • Easily run (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @09:37AM (#14435063)
    Someone has obviously never tried running a .NET application under Mono. More often than not, it calls Win32 via PInvoke, uses an ActiveX control / COM interop, or does something else which renders it unusable on other platforms. Some apps might work, particularly command line tools, but it is by no means guaranteed or even probable.

    And this is probably what MS had in mind all along. And I don't see it changing either. Microsoft make it easy to slap together apps with their stack and tools. Mono makes it hard to do the same with theirs. That means Mono will constantly be playing catch-up with Microsoft, reaching for but never getting close to 100% compatibility.

    • Re:Easily run (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Giometrix ( 932993 )
      I've never done more with mono that the simple "Hello World" app. Does Mono have an equivilent (or near equivilent) of Windows Forms?

      • Re:Easily run (Score:5, Informative)

        by adolfojp ( 730818 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @10:08AM (#14435243)
        There is a WinForms compatibility layer in the making. Its first release will handle the WinForms of the 1.1 .net specification. Mono will be forced to play catching up with this GUI framework and it uses the compatibility stack instead of the ECMA compliant one.

        If you want to make Linux applications using Mono I strongly recommend using GTK#. Beagle and F-Spot use GTK#.

        Cheers,
        Adolfo

    • Re:Easily run (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jonwil ( 467024 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @10:08AM (#14435249)
      And that is where WINE comes in.
      The people behind Mono and the WINE people should work together so that Mono will use WINE for any PInvoke (either standard win32 APIs or something custom that comes with the .NET app) and hence the WINE implementation of COM & OLE for any ActiveX controls or COM interop.
      If the item being used (e.g. the API call being PInvoked) is a standard windows item, then the .NET app will run on any system that has a usable port of WINE and Mono on it. If it is a non standard item for which source code is available, again, it could be ported and run via WINE or WineLib somehow. (or if its closed source but documented, it could be cloned somehow)
      Even if the item being used is a closed source propriatory item for which there is no possible clone or use on non x86 platforms, Mono with WINE could still be used to run the whole thing on x86 linux

      The question is whether the WINE people are prepared to do what is necessary to allow Mono to use WINE for the bits it needs (including PInvoke, COM and the talked-about implementation of System.Windows.Forms which has to go on top of something looking like user32 so that all the support is there)

  • Mono and python (Score:2, Insightful)

    by amightywind ( 691887 )

    As a Gentoo user I wouldn't expect any package to be summarily left out. What I worry about is for packages such like Mono to become deeply embedded in distributions and create lots of dependencies, like Python. Python is increasingly a boil on the butt of GNU/Linux systems. Mono could go the same way.

    • I use python for just about everything including machine automation at work. A distro without python would be absolutely worthless to me. Hell ain't the gentoo ports system built on python?(don't know for sure I don't use gentoo).

      • Sadly the portage system is written in Python, which is my point. Gentoo depends on Python. A simple clean design would have Gentoo consist of a kernel, binutils, compiler stack, init scripts, and portage written in C and depending on the C library only. Instead the portage system pulls in Python for no particular reason. By all means use Python as an application language. Foundational system services should not be written in it.

        • I remember when I could run Gentoo happily on my P120 with 32MB of RAM. Not any more! Its now so slow on my 3GHz system and I'm looking for a faster source based distribution. I hate to say it, but FreeBSD is starting to look good.
          • If you run the same programs on a BSD system, your computer is not going to magically become faster. By most accounts that I have seen, Linux tends to be faster than BSD.

            Also, I just checked the Gentoo website, they still have an install CD that is under 60 MB, so I know for a fact that the distribution can still be made small and light.

        • Re:Unless you use python (Score:4, Insightful)

          by gowen ( 141411 ) <gwowen@gmail.com> on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @10:01AM (#14435214) Homepage Journal
          Instead the portage system pulls in Python for no particular reason.
          Portage is a complicated set of programs. Complicated programs are easier to write in python, because of the languages features, and complicated secure programs even more so. They're written in python because the developers consider it (one of) the best solutions to the problem.

          If you know better, and think it should have been written in C, I', sure the present developers would be very interested in seeing your port.
        • I would say that the portage system pulls in Python for a very particular reason... It is written in Python. Python is also easy to learn so it makes it easy to be a package manager, which means Gentoo will have lots of packages available.
        • Python is just another scripting language but a very powerful and flexible one. Not a whole lot different then using bash on a system should bash go away also?

      • I agree totally. Since the beginning of time, Unices have included Perl, because that's what everyone used for automation. Python has (thankfully) changed things, to the point where most distros consider Python as obligatory as Perl.

        Grand-parent is quite mistaken about how much of a "pain in the butt" (or was it "boil on the ass"? whatever) Python is though -- on my systems at least, it compiles faster and in less RAM (swap, rather) than Perl. And I can then rest assured that most Python scripts I find, or

    • Re:Mono and python (Score:5, Insightful)

      by m50d ( 797211 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @10:08AM (#14435244) Homepage Journal
      How is it a boil? It's a great language, very useful, makes the base system smaller overall (because so many things can be made much smaller in python) and is nice to be able to depend on it being available. Slating distributions for depending on python is like criticising them for depending on libc.

  • talking about exaggeration (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @09:38AM (#14435067)
    This will mean that in future, all native Windows applications will easily run on Linux, with Mono.

    How about

    This may mean that in the future, some native Windows applications will run on Linux, with Mono.

  • Will Mono achieve what WINE could not? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by overshoot ( 39700 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @09:39AM (#14435073)
    Not a chance. All of the MS application base (including the new ".NET" stuff) still depends on the underlying Win32 system functions, DLLs, etc. The newer interpreted APIs are just wrappers around the older stuff.

    • Re:Will Mono achieve what WINE could not? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @09:58AM (#14435188) Homepage
      Actually it is quite easy because of one crucial difference. It's not the implementation that matters, it is the interface. And .NET provides a good interface.

      Even if Microsoft implemented the .NET APIs as wrappers around Windows APIs, the fact is that the APIs are clean and they are well documented. They follow the rules of encapsulation well. That makes it possible to re-implement them in a straightforward fashion. The problem with WINE is that the Windows API does not follow good design and rules of encapsulation, so the implementation is often exposed. WINE is not an implementation of an API as much as it is a reverse-engineering of one. But that problem goes away with .NET.

      Mono today works stunningly well today. The only issue is Windows Forms, because it isn't as well encapsulated as the rest of the API.

  • One more thing (Score:3, Insightful)

    by lheal ( 86013 ) <lheal1999NO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @09:41AM (#14435079) Journal
    to turn off in Kickstart.

    Patents are (supposed) to protect a novel way of doing something. If you can watch that something occur and come up with the same thing, how novel was it?

    I know that doesn't mean much once someone already has a patent and a lawyer, but still.

    • Patents are (supposed) to protect a novel way of doing something. If you can watch that something occur and come up with the same thing, how novel was it?

      Generally, I get the impression that most of you people literally don't understand what "innovate" (or in this case "novel") means, but you've provided the most obvious example yet.

  • er, no (Score:2, Funny)

    by Doktor Memory ( 237313 )
    This will mean that in future, all native Windows applications will easily run on Linux, with Mono.

    If by "the future" you mean "never", then this is correct. Otherwise, this is balderdash.

  • Some interesting stuff coming in .NET (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Sanity ( 1431 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @09:49AM (#14435134) Homepage Journal
    Microsoft has some interesting technologies in the pipeline for .NET 3.0. One of the most exciting is LINQ [microsoft.com] which will change the way we interact with SQL databases, and data in general from within our code. Other language enhancements will mean that Java has a lot of catching up to do (and no, I'm not a M$ fanboy, Java is my tool of choice and I use a Mac).

    The question is: Will Mono support these new features, and if so, when?

    • Who is this "we"? Perhaps it won't have the slightest effect on 90% of us. Why does this post sound like a Microsoft marketing bulletin with a small addition to try and make it look less obvious?
      • Why does this post sound like a Microsoft marketing bulletin with a small addition to try and make it look less obvious?
        It probably sounds like that to you because you are a slashbot.

        If you disagree with something I said then why not offer more than a childish ad hominem?

    • I would imagine that the new features are broken down into:
      Runtime/VM changes & support
      Class Library additions & changes
      Compiler & language chages

      Presumably the most important thing for Mono is to support the first one (including any new stuff added to the bytecodes and such) and the essential parts of the second one.
    • LINQ introduces anonymous and higher-order functions like filter, map etc. (a circa-1970 innovation) to C#, plus a syntax hack that allows you to write something like

      var seniorNames = from p in people
      where p.age>40
      order by p.age
      select p.name;

      instead of

      var seniorNames = people.Where(p => p.age > 40).OrderBy(p => p.age).Select(p => p.name)

      to make people think that this is something completely new (me, I would prefer the 2nd version), plus an introspection hac

  • Last time I looked at it, Mono didn't support Windows Forms (and thus couldn't just run your average .NET app out of the box). Has that changed?

  • Mono is like Java (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TCFOO ( 876339 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @09:56AM (#14435176)
    This will mean that in future, all native Windows applications will easily run on Linux, with Mono Maby, but Mono is sorta like java. the .Net Programs will be portable as long as the developers don't use Microsoft APIs like java is portable to gcj as long as you don't use the com.sun.* packages etc.

    • Re:Mono is like Java (Score:3, Interesting)

      by jsight ( 8987 )

      Maby, but Mono is sorta like java. the .Net Programs will be portable as long as the developers don't use Microsoft APIs like java is portable to gcj as long as you don't use the com.sun.* packages etc.

      Sort of... actually .Net is worse. In the Java world, using "com.sun.*" packages is considered to be a VERY BAD practice, even by Sun. The standard API documentation, for example, does not even include them.

      People do still use them from time to time, but they can cause problems even without getting GCJ/GNUC

  • Vista will muddle the developer landscape (Score:5, Interesting)

    by boxlight ( 928484 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @09:56AM (#14435177)
    Mono is becoming increasing important due to Windows Vista

    As a developer, I have great concern over how Vista will muddle the Windows landscape. Microsoft is creating a situation where developers have to build and test for way too many Windows platforms.

    That is, many developers and network administrators use Windows 2000 exclusively and most other pros and home users use XP -- and my father in law still uses Windows 98. NONE of these people have any intention of upgrading to Vista. So Vista will likely only be installed on new PCs

    It's getting to the point where there's just too many versions of Windows out there to support:

    Win 98 SE
    Win 2k Workstation and Server(s)
    Win XP Home and Pro
    Win Vista??

    And the pointy-haired-bosses will continue to shout that *all* versions of Windows must be supported. That means more development, more testing, more installers, more deep sighs.

    The "write once run anywhere" of Java is becoming more attractive all the time.

    boxlight

    • Re:Vista will muddle the developer landscape (Score:4, Informative)

      by adolfojp ( 730818 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @10:22AM (#14435351)
      As long as you make your applications for the .NET framework your applications will run on the .NET framework.
      You can get it here [microsoft.com] and according to their website it will run on the following:
      Supported Operating Systems: Windows 2000 Service Pack 3; Windows 98; Windows 98 Second Edition; Windows ME; Windows Server 2003; Windows XP Service Pack 2
      It is like Java, except that it is designed to feel and perform like a native windows app.

      As for Vista. Considering the monumental effort that they made in making their .NET 2.0 compatible with the 1.1 I can't see any good reason for them to break it in the future.

      Cheers,
      Adolfo

    • And the pointy-haired-bosses will continue to shout that *all* versions of Windows must be supported. That means more development, more testing, more installers, more deep sighs.

      You act like this is a new problem and not just the situation that the industry has been in since the beginning. What about supporting old versions of Linux? Old versions of DOS? Old versions of Java? Old versions of Python?

      The "write once run anywhere" of Java is becoming more attractive all the time.

      Right: Java doesn't h

  • Eh... no (Score:4, Insightful)

    by adolfojp ( 730818 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @09:57AM (#14435181)
    Mono is becoming increasing important due to Windows Vista, which has WinFX
    Mono is becoming such an important platform because it is such a great platform to develop for. If you like statically typed languages C# has no equal. If you like virtual machines, mono is the only one that performs well and is open source. If you like python, you will be able to compile python to bytecode for added performance.

    Winforms on mono is not complete yet and it will be a long time before a compatibility WinFX layer is ready. Mono is great for what it is, not for what it could be.

    Cheers,
    Adolfo
    • Why would I not just run python native which supports way more platforms?

    • Re:Eh... no (Score:3, Informative)

      by jsight ( 8987 )

      If you like virtual machines, mono is the only one that performs well and is open source.


      Is this really true? I was under the impression that Cacao [cacaojvm.org] was actually fairly fast.

      And the Mono runtime is far from wonderful at this point, IMO (not all that stable, and not particularly fast).

      • Re:Eh... no (Score:4, Informative)

        by adolfojp ( 730818 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @10:30AM (#14435412)
        Sir, you are absolutely correct and Cacao is great. And now, to undo my mistake, allow me to rewrite my previous statement.
        If you like virtual machines, mono is the only one that performs well and is open source and is designed to be almost programming language independent.

        • Funny (Score:3, Interesting)

          by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) *
          If you like virtual machines, mono is the only one that performs well and is open source and is designed to be almost programming language independent.

          It's awfully funny how C# developers all the sudden get all teary-eyed over the ability to use any other language than C# when the topic of faster JVM's comes up...

          But then someone has to go and mention that the JVM runs about 200 languages [robert-tolksdorf.de]. How many does .Net run again? And how many are not bastard neutered languages like managed C++?

          So I guess you need to

  • What I want to know is ..... (Score:5, Funny)

    by ajs318 ( 655362 ) <sd_resp2@@@earthshod...co...uk> on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @09:57AM (#14435184)
    ..... why wasn't the Open Source clone of the "C#" programming language called "Db" ?

  • Misleading (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JanneM ( 7445 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @10:04AM (#14435224) Homepage
    The whole "run Win-apps under Linux" really is a little misleading. That's not really the point of Mono for most users.

    The point, rather, is that it is a very, very nice development environment and a very pleasant language, well-suited for application development, as f-spot and others are a testament to. As a bonus, the apps written under mono will be easy to deploy under Windows as well, should it be needed.

    And when you use Mono to write desktop apps under Linux you aren't using anything Windows-related that isn't covered by the ECMA standard. You have no larger exposure to patent issues than you have under any other environment (possibly barring plain C and POSIX libs. Possibly).

  • Big Deal (Score:3, Informative)

    by smartin ( 942 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @10:10AM (#14435257)
    If anyone thinks that Mono will allow applications that were written on windows to the windows implementation of .net will somehow run seemlessly under linux, think again. .net is largely a scripting front end for native windows C++ dlls. Yes there are some implemenations of some of the .net libraries for mono but there is no way that 90% of the code written for .net will ever work under linux. Even applicatons written specifically for mono, like paperboy or beagle are shakey at best.

    I suppose mono is interesting if you think the .net framework is useful, but if you want to get/write/use cross platform applications, say away from propietary M$ technology.
  • But that's not important anyway. I think Mono is just another framework that can be used to develope slick apps on Linux. Having compatibility with apps written for .NET is just a fringe benefit. As we all know, MS is apt to change apis and break mono's compatibility on a whim. Even when they do, though, Mono is still incredibly useful to the Linux community.

    I think that Mono, Java, Python, Perl, C, and C++ will all be very useful languages and environments, all deeply integrated with GTK, Gnome, QT, KD
  • I think one of most important points is possible to code in C# for GNOME platform. C# is easy, object-oriented language (similar to Java), so it IS important to get various programmers which are familiar with Microsoft .NET Studio to even start to THINK about that. About Windows apps is also important, but I would not say that is is highly possible that all apps based on .NET will run on Mono - because, quite frankly, .NET is not as portable as Mono is.

    I think we should move on and forget patent scare, beca

  • really (Score:3, Insightful)

    by petermgreen ( 876956 ) <plugwash.p10link@net> on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @10:18AM (#14435322) Homepage
    This will mean that in future, all native Windows applications will easily run on Linux, with Mono. Will Mono achieve what WINE could not?"

    BULLSHIT

    mono will run into the same problem wine and free java have. if developers develop for one implementation you will be hard pressed to make an alternate implementation that works flawlessly with the apps those developers develop.
  • the best bit about Moo is the CLR, for which IronPython has been written.

    IronPython is a complete reimplementation of python, that uses the common lala rumbleburper and therefore it understands - and directly interfaces with - .NET and Mono binaries. this is _fantastic_, because it means that you can write code in python and yet access a stack of rubbish written in some daft microsoft language.

    the only thing: you _do not_ have access to the python system libraries (but that's okay because you have full acc
  • Here is an idea, instead of aping after everything Microsoft does (monkey see, monkey do...), thereby giving them water on their millwheel, why don't you write good apps that run natively on Linux instead.

    Or if you really want platform independence, write it in Java. Then you will be able to run it on Windows, Mac, Unix, Linux, BSD, mainframes...

    • You are half right.

      I personally believe that most projects spent on emulating something Microsoft has done is a waste of time. Historically Microsoft has had very little contribution to the computer industry that has any significant longevity or impact outside of their own interests.

      With the exception of MONO, I am not aware of any projects to emulate Microsoft versions of languages (eg: Visual Basic). In contrast, Perl, Python, Ruby, Lisp, Java, C/C++ where all languages that were developed someplace o

  • Completely missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GauteL ( 29207 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @11:32AM (#14435816)
    The inclusion of Mono in Fedora is the first step towards healing a rather serious potential rift in the GNOME world. Up until now, you could not develop a Mono-app with GTK# and expect it to work on all major updated distributions without added software.

    Don't worry about Windows compatibility, Mono is cool enough on it's own, especially because Novell/Ximian has done such a good job with the Mono-wrappers for GNOME-technologies. Hopefully this will see more GNOME-development.

  • Dangerous (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kaffiene ( 38781 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @04:11PM (#14439200)
    Mono is a trojan horse. Letting it into Linux distros is BAD. We're inviting patent issues into Linux which is stupid.

    Well, time to switch to Debian - I *will not* run that crap.

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