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GNOME Software GUI Programming Linux IT Technology

Miguel de Icaza Talks About Mono 596

Posted by Hemos from the it's-a-necessary-element dept.
Matthew Revell writes "Miguel de Icaza defends Mono and talks about its future relationship with the Gnome desktop, in the latest LugRadio. The leader of the open source implementation of .NET says no one is forced to use Mono but he hopes it will make life easier for open source developers. "
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Miguel de Icaza Talks About Mono More

Miguel de Icaza Talks About Mono

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  • mono (Score:2, Informative)

    by relluf ( 722817 )
    Mono is a great programming tool, I hope that it manages to find its way into mainstream gnome. It shows alot of promise anyway. I do belive that CLIs are the way to go.

  • Patent issues? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 14, 2005 @11:13AM (#11668279)

    he hopes it will make life easier for open source developers.

    I thought the problem was that Microsoft told everybody that they didn't have any patents on C# or .NET, but they are actually a licensee of somebody else who has patents on it? Miguel dodged the question on this one by simply stating that it was a reimplementation rather than licensing .NET from Microsoft.

    Listening to the audio, the things on the horizon are Windows Forms and incremental improvements (tuning). People are porting applications today, usually you can just copy the binary, but ignorant Windows developers do things like screw up path separators, assume case-insensitive systems, etc.

    • what's the alternative? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jeif1k ( 809151 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @01:55PM (#11670132)
      I thought the problem was that Microsoft told everybody that they didn't have any patents on C# or .NET, but they are actually a licensee of somebody else who has patents on it?

      Well, let's be precise. C# and .NET are two different things.

      C# is an ECMA standard with features that are found in dozens of other languages. There is no indication that there is anything patentable about it. In fact, if you look at the C# specification, it is clear that they have been careful to avoid patents that Sun owns on Java (yes, Java is patent encumbered).

      Then there is .NET. It is a huge collection of APIs, many of them Windows specific. In a trial balloon, Microsoft has attempted to patent the totality of those APIs. What the significance of that patent is going to be isn't clear--it may not be worth the paper it is written on.

      So, what's the upshot of it all? You can't avoid the risk of patent infringement no matter what language you use. However, at this point, it is pretty clear that C# exposes you to no greater risk than other languages. As for .NET, you don't have to use it: most open source applications developed in Mono are written using the Gnome APIs, not the .NET APIs.

      It's not an ideal world, but if you want a reasonably popular and practical natively compiled language with garbage collection and reflection, your choice basically comes down to C# and Java. Java is completely owned by Sun: Sun owns the specifications, Sun holds many patents on it, and Sun effectively can control who may implement Java and who may not (they have chosen not to exercise that control vis-a-vis implementations like gcj and classpath yet, but if they want to, they can). C# may not be the ideal choice, but it's the best you are going to get.

  • SWF (Score:2, Insightful)

    by wizbit ( 122290 )
    Mono rocks, and the latest 1.1 branch has support for System.Windows.Forms, the only (that I know of, anyway) cross-platform implementation of the GUI calls from .NET - native calls made on Windows, GDI+ and Cairo for other platforms. Truly a godsend for developing cross-platform apps in C#.

    I wish the Mono project and Miguel the best - they have done some excellent, excellent work and deserve to be commended.

  • .NET is a litigation nightmare waiting to happen (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 14, 2005 @11:15AM (#11668291)
    The prospect of GNOME becoming dependant was the straw that broke the camels back and made me switch to XFCE, keep the .NET patented API out of GTK!

    • Re:.NET is a litigation nightmare waiting to happe (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 14, 2005 @11:31AM (#11668472)
      Here is Miguel's answer to GNOME becomig depentdant on MONO: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-hackers/2002- February/msg00031.html [gnome.org]

    • Re:.NET is a litigation nightmare waiting to happe (Score:4, Insightful)

      by 21mhz ( 443080 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @12:01PM (#11668776) Journal
      You were rather quick to jump ship, because the said prospect never materialized and is unlikely to materialize any time soon.

    • Re:.NET is a litigation nightmare waiting to happe (Score:4, Interesting)

      by bonch ( 38532 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @12:04PM (#11668806)
      The .NET API is an open standard. The best thing Microsoft could ever do for Mono would be to sue it. The publicity and attention and droves of users/developers it would get would be monumental. They'll ignore it.

      • Not exactly (Score:4, Insightful)

        by TheConfusedOne ( 442158 ) <the.confused.one ... m ['il.' in gap]> on Monday February 14, 2005 @12:43PM (#11669214) Journal
        Microsoft released portions of the CLR (Common Language Runtime) and C# for standardization. The real nuts-and-bolts of .NET are decidedly NOT an open standard. This is what concers many people.

        Additionally, since .NET is a wholly controlled "standard" by MS then Mono will be on the same treadmill that WINE and other groups chasing MS implementations have been on.

        • misleading and wrong (Score:4, Insightful)

          by jeif1k ( 809151 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @02:11PM (#11670339)
          The real nuts-and-bolts of .NET are decidedly NOT an open standard. This is what concers many people.

          Yes, large parts of .NET are not an open standard. But it's wrong to refer to those as "the real nuts-and-bolts", which falsely suggests that Microsoft kept important portions of the low-level foundations of C# proprietary.

          ECMA C# is a complete and powerful language and set of libraries--far more complete than C or C++. Together with the open source APIs that already exist on Linux (Gtk, Gnome, etc.), it gives you a fully open and documented platform to build applications on.

          Additionally, since .NET is a wholly controlled "standard" by MS then Mono will be on the same treadmill that WINE and other groups chasing MS implementations have been on.

          Most open source Mono developers won't be affected by .NET at all because they won't be using .NET; they'll be using C# with open source APIs.

          If you choose to use .NET, for example because you are developing a Windows application that you also make available on Linux, then, of course, you are dependent on the .NET APIs, but that's because you chose to use .NET. Mono is doing the best job they can in giving you that capability, but even if they fail, it just won't make a difference to open source developers.

          Also note that Mono is in a far better situation in this regard than open source Java efforts: Sun has draconian compatibility requirements with which they may be able to shut down any open source Java project whenever they choose.

          • Re:misleading and wrong (Score:3, Interesting)

            by alext ( 29323 )
            Balderdash.

            Mono's goal, indeed its reason for being, is to clone Dotnet. Not C Sharp, not the CLI, but the complete platform. That statement has been there on the go-mono site since day 1.

            Now suddenly (that is, since about October last year) the true effort involved in staying on the MS treadmill has finally become apparent to the Mono developers. So we now have the emergence of Plan B, which cheerfully discards any notion of Dotnet compatibility and leaves Mono as yet another bytecode system, of which we

            • Re:misleading and wrong (Score:3, Interesting)

              by jeif1k ( 809151 )
              Mono's goal, indeed its reason for being, is to clone Dotnet.

              That's the reason Novell is paying the bill, and it is one goal among several.

              Now suddenly (that is, since about October last year)

              There is nothing "sudden" about it; the Gtk# bindings were there from pretty much the start of the Mono project, long before Windows.Forms was even usable. Almost all Mono GUI apps are written with them.

              I'm sorry you weren't paying attention (or is it that you just make up false "facts" to badmouth projects you
    • The prospect of GNOME becoming dependant was the straw that broke the camels back and made me switch to XFCE,

      The Gnome for Mono libraries don't use .NET APIs, they rely only on ECMA C#.

      keep the .NET patented API out of GTK!

      There won't be any .NET APIs in Gtk+; Gtk# is a Gtk binding for Mono, not the other way around.

      And you better hope that Mono succeeds, becaues there is really not much else out there to develop the next generation of Linux desktop apps in.

  • Why I love mono (Score:4, Informative)

    by adolfojp ( 730818 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @11:16AM (#11668305)
    C# is one of the best ECMA compliant languages today. When used with open source libraries it is a very powerfull developement tool. It is only quasi ilegal when you use the microsoft libraries wich you DON'T need to use.

    For rapid application developement under Linux I'll take C# and mono any day.

    Cheers,
    Adolfo

    • Re:Why I love mono (Score:3, Interesting)

      by hsmith ( 818216 )
      I am a java fanatic, but c# has really pulled me away. It is a breeze to build enterprise web applications in C# compared to the counterpart in java. Java missed the ball with J2EE IMO, they made it more difficult than it needed to be. MS got it right with ASP.NET...

      • Re:Why I love mono (Score:3, Interesting)

        by SunFan ( 845761 )

        Java doesn't staple your testicles to Windows. .NET does. All .NET is is a Windows development platform--"cross platform" doesn't even enter the picture.

      • Re:Why I love mono (Score:3, Insightful)

        by LDoggg_ ( 659725 )
        J2EE is a collection of technologies not a specific methodology or architecture.
        There are several ways to write "enterprise" web applications in java. If you don't like EJB & servlets, maybe you'd like to use struts with JDO, or java server faces with hibernate, or just procedural JSP with straight JDBC or mix and match whatever pieces you want.

        Are you sure MS go it right, or did you just pick the wrong coding paradigm out of the available J2EE technologies?

    • Re:Why I love mono (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      C# is one of the best ECMA compliant languages today.

      This is an utterly nonsensical statement. ECMA is a standards body, you can't "comply" with an organisation.

      ECMA has published a number of specifications, such as ECMA-262 (Javascript/JScript/QtScript), ECMA-334 (C#) and ECMA-335 (CLI).

      Even if you were to take your original statement as referring to ECMA-334 rather than ECMA itself, it's still nonsensical. C# is "one of the best" at implementing its own spec? Duh! In other news, green is the

  • The leader of the open source implementation of .NET says no one is forced to use Mono

    Good news.

    R: Well, we mused, you could hardly expect The Beast to come up with a LISP
    machine, could you, ha ha?
    G: No, but they could have been more creative than that.
    -- www.theregister.co.uk interviewing James Gosling about C#

  • And it does (Score:2, Interesting)

    by MajorDick ( 735308 )
    I played with Mono when it was first in Beta as I love the .Net CLR, no its not perfect, but its pretty damm good.

    Mono was a way for me to extend my growing .Net knowledge againt Unix and non MS plattforms.
    I just downloaded 1.3 (Beta) and I am VERY Impressed with how far they have come I converted a small web app about 10 pages to run under mono, and it does perfectly, I only had to steer clear of a few of my more ecclectic .Net shortcuts, (I should have in the first place)
    Mono is and has been self hosting

    • Re:And it does (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Sheetrock ( 152993 )
      It's probably the next stage in computing. Mono (and .NET) are lambasted by folks who are rooted in the past; much like Java, it will have an uphill battle to win mindshare amongst people who believe we should continue to concern ourselves with type safety, buffer overflows and memory leaks when we can design or use a system that takes care of such problems for us.

      Fortunately, this is not a popularity contest. If it works best I'll use it, and if it becomes the patent minefield that others suggest I'll

  • Mono And Linux (Score:5, Informative)

    by WombatControl ( 74685 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @11:19AM (#11668340)

    I've tried Mono, and while I've little desire to move from Python over to Mono, it's a very well done project. The GTK bindings are quite nice, and C# as a language is much, much, much easier to work with than Java.

    The big "if" is whether or not Mono can become to popular without Microsoft trying to pull the plug. However, even if that does happen, C# is an ECMA standard. There are plenty of native Linux libraries that can be used in place of the Microsoft classes. For developing GUI applications under Linux, you're not going to use the Windows.Forms libraries anyway, you're going to use GTK. Mono can stand on its own as a good RAD language for developing graphical applications for GNOME.

    I know it's fashionable to bash MS at every turn (and as a Mac/Linux user I do all the time), but C# is a nice language and the .NET libraries are infinitely better than the cruft of Win32/MFC and the other mess of libraries that Microsoft used to shove down programmer's throats. Mono has done an excellent job of taking those libraries and making them work on Linux.

    Even without the Microsoft libraries, Mono still provides a good framework for RAD under Linux and GNOME. If we can make it as easy as possible to transition between Windows programming and Linux programming it only helps propagate Linux.

    • Re:Mono And Linux (Score:4, Insightful)

      by alext ( 29323 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @11:43AM (#11668598)
      C# as a language is much, much, much easier to work with than Java

      Not just interesting, more like astonishing given that the languages are practically identical.

      • Re:Mono And Linux (Score:4, Informative)

        by mrroach ( 164090 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @12:09PM (#11668848)
        From my brief poking at both java and c# for gui programming, the difference that strikes me most is the incessant need in java to create anonymous classes for event handling:
        addHandler(new eventHandler() {
        public void yaddaYadda(EventThingie e) {
        }
        });
        As opposed to c#'s typical method:
        clicked += clickedEvent;
        ...
        }
        public void clickedEvent(object o, EventArgs e) {

        }
        I know it is not a huge difference, but I much prefer c#'s method.

        -Mark

        • Re:Mono And Linux (Score:3, Informative)

          by mrtrumbe ( 412155 )
          I can count, on one hand, the number of improvements C# makes on top of java's syntax:

          1) Events
          2) foreach (versus for loops)
          3) Properties (versus accessor methods)
          4) Boxing/Unboxing (versus Classes for intregal types--also used as the "implicit" operator)

          Forgive me if I missed anything, but this is all I can think of. On the flip side, Java has a few things which I consider better than C#'s implementation:

          1) Explicit declaration of the exceptions a given function will throw.
          2) Better handling of pac

          • Re:Mono And Linux (Score:5, Informative)

            by miguel ( 7116 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @12:44PM (#11669227) Homepage
            If comparing C# 1.0 vs Java 1.4:

            * Attributes.
            * Support for unsafe code.
            * P/Invoke vs JNI is a fairly big difference.
            * Operator overloading, which on the .NET Framework is used with good taste.

            If comparing C# 2.0 vs Java 1.5:

            * Iterators (yield keyword).
            * Anonymous methods.
            * Fixed buffers
            * Generics for value types (Java only has generics
            for reference types, everything else must be
            "boxed", the Int vs "int" problem).

            Now, from a pure usability standpoint, I like
            the tiny things like:

            * `mono program.exe' runs your program, no need to
            pass a class name, or a path or setup the cp to
            run.

            * The layout of my files is not constrained to
            one-file, one-class and the file system hierarchy
            does not have to match the namespaces I have
            chosen.

            Miguel.

            • Re:Mono And Linux (Score:4, Interesting)

              by claes ( 25551 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @01:19PM (#11669673)

              `mono program.exe' runs your program, no need to
              pass a class name, or a path or setup the cp to
              run.



              'java -jar program.jar' would be the Java equivalent.


              The layout of my files is not constrained to
              one-file, one-class and the file system hierarchy
              does not have to match the namespaces I have
              chosen.


              one-file - one-class is not neccessary with Java either, although I guess you are somewhat more restricted than in C# (which I don't know well)

            • I forgot about Attributes. I love those guys, too. Very useful.

              However, count me among those who prefer JNI to P/Invoke and unsafe code. Why would I want to pollute my java/c# codebase with c code? I prefer putting this code in a seperate library and using p/invoke or jni. However, I find p/invoke suffers from the "everything must be dynamic" syndrome that I found with COM. There is no good way to verify at compile time that I am not doing something blatently stupid. At least JNI forces you to compil

            • Re:Mono And Linux (Score:3, Interesting)

              by LDoggg_ ( 659725 )
              * `mono program.exe' runs your program, no need to pass a class name, or a path or setup the cp to run.

              So does `java -jar program.jar`

              The layout of my files is not constrained to one-file, one-class and the file system hierarchy does not have to match the namespaces I have chosen.

              I guess I've just never found this to be a problem. It has forced me to keep my code organized which I found to be a good thing. And any third party libraries should be in jar files for effeciency.

  • Mirror for ogg files (Score:3, Informative)

    by mjmartin_uk ( 776702 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @11:20AM (#11668359)

    I've put the high and low quality recordings of Season 2 Episode 9 - 14 February 2005 in Ogg format up here:

    http://www.gobisoft.net/tmp/ [gobisoft.net]

    Just in case the Slashdot effect takes hold.

  • How Much .NET Can I use? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by zoomba ( 227393 ) <mfc131@nospAM.gmail.com> on Monday February 14, 2005 @11:21AM (#11668371) Homepage
    I understand that I can compile C# code across any platform that either has .NET or MONO installed on it. Or any major .NET language. My question is, does MONO extend to ASP.NET and integrating in some way with Apache?

    I ask this because I do ASP.NET development where I work, and would like to be able to do some of it on my Powerbook or Linux desktop at home if I need to. I know PHP is the better solution under Linux, and I would prefer to be doing it but it's not a supported product where I work so it's out.

  • Interoperability Potential (Score:3, Interesting)

    by qwerty55 ( 858835 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @11:24AM (#11668402)
    I think Mono may actually be a good think for Linux. One of the things that keeps many people using Windows is that they don't want to give up their current application set to learn the open source equivalents. A project like Mono has the potential to to allow developers to simultaneously target both Windows and Linux, which may lead to more Windows apps running on Linux and in turn more people willing to consider running Linux. Also, C# is a nice language to program in.

  • Hope for ex-Java and Linux Developers (Score:3, Interesting)

    by lowvato ( 68700 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @11:27AM (#11668431) Journal
    Many of us have taken jobs at shops that are Microsoft only shops. I hope that Mono takes off in a big way since that would give us a chance to easily port our apps over or at least develop on something other than fucking windows xp. It really sucks to get stuck in the MS world and not have the time to work in other environments and not be able to have other platforms run at the place that you work. Maybe Mono can be a bridge from the dark valley of MS purgatory.

  • Please don't hit me... (Score:4, Funny)

    by alext ( 29323 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @11:28AM (#11668450)
    defends Mono by saying no one is forced to use it

    Awww, I bet those of you that have been beating him up for the last 3 years feel really mean now!

    Don't worry, it will pass.

  • Leaving out half the community? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by m50d ( 797211 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @11:32AM (#11668480) Homepage Journal
    Don't get me wrong, I think mono is a great idea. But I'm worried about how closely tied it is to gnome. Not because of it taking over gnome, but because of it ignoring KDE. I think they should try and get more of the Qt stuff in there, Qt# at least should be in the standard mono dist. Otherwise you just split everyone.

  • Choice of GUI toolkit (Score:4, Interesting)

    by HogynCymraeg ( 624823 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @11:37AM (#11668545)
    I remember hearing that GTK# was the way to go WRT the default mono toolkit. Bad idea. GTK on windows is pretty bad. However, I found this [sourceforge.net] project which makes wxWidgets available to mono. Why oh why would you want to use gtk# over wxWidgets (which in turn uses native UI)?

  • Patents: ASP.NET, ADO.NET and Windows.Forms (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 14, 2005 @11:47AM (#11668644)
    From the Mono's FAQ:

    Question 131: Could patents be used to completely disable Mono (either submarine patents filed now, or changes made by Microsoft specifically to create patent problems)?

    The controversial elements are the ASP.NET, ADO.NET and Windows.Forms subsets. Those are convenient for people who need full compatibility with the Windows platform, but are not required for the open source Mono platform, nor integration with today's Mono's rich support of Linux.

    The patents do not apply in countries where software patents are not allowed.
    Hopefully, the patents will fail in the US too; not many applications can be developed without ASP.NET, ADO.NET and Windows.Forms packages.

  • Give Credit Where Credit is due. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Laoping ( 398603 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @11:54AM (#11668702)
    I know, I know, MS is the evil empire and Open Source is the rebellion trying to free the universe and all that but I got to say that .Net is a fantastic language. I have programmed in C, C++, Java, and .Net and I have to say .Net is currently the best. Java 5 is close but it in missing a few things I like from .Net. I love Mono, and I think it works great. I have only had a few problems with it, but nothing major. It really is nice to develop server applications that can run on Windows and Linux, which is really nice for people who develop for enterprise level deployments. One company will want to use you server in a 2003 domain, the next wants it to run on Red Hat. With C++ and to some extent even Java this just does not work.

    On top of that as someone who studied programming languages for my masters project I have to say the .Net system is just the best-designed environments I have seen. I would expect that you will start to see it taught in the colleges, because It allows you to teach people programming that is not language specific. Hopefully you can then get people to know VB, Managed C++ and C# by the end on college, not just Java. Then you can take the importance off learning the syntax and place it on to learning structures and algorithms. Most importantly you then teach the skill of being to switch to new languages and adapt you knowledge, to teach people ho to learn, which in the most important skill I learned in college

  • Why Mono is necessary for the Linux/UNIX world (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tillmann ( 859300 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @12:00PM (#11668763)
    Hi,

    I can perfectly understand that many hate Mono simply because of the fact that it was Microsoft who designed .NET. That is a valid argument; however, it must be considered that Mono is something that, in the future, is really required for the Linux/UNIX world.

    I suppose that those bashing Mono have never actually worked with C#. Personally, I'm really an anti-MS guy, but at work I was basically "forced" to use C#, and I must admit, it absolutely rocks. It is simply a much more productive language than C or C++, especially for GUI development. When you get a specific task, you're simply much more likely to get it done and get it stable within a given time in C#. The biggest productivity gain (besides the syntax candy, like foreach loops) comes from the garbage collection. Sure, other languages like Java have that, too. But, as far as typical DESKTOP applications are concerned, Java has failed to gain popularity both with users and developers (I suppose the major reason is that Sun took way too long to finally allow Java GUI apps to integrate themselves seemlessly in the desktop by adapting a "native" look & feel; but that's another issue).

    Linux apps have done a great job in the past years in getting competitive to their Windows counterparts. So, if Linux wants to stay competitive with Windows in the future as well, there must be a similarly productive language for GUI development on Linux. Standard C/C++ with GTK+ and QT can certainly compete with the horrors of MFC easily. But, in my opinion, not necessarily with the combination of C#/Windows.Forms, as far as speed of development is concerned.

    Also, if we want to see more commercial applications to run on Linux, there must be a way to easily develop portable GUI apps. Imagine you're the boss of a smaller software company. You develop Windows apps, your customers all use Windows (welcome to the real world!). Maybe 3% of your customers consider switching to Linux. And now you're starting that new software project that must be finished within a certain time. What are you gonna do? Buy QT, and tell your developers to start learning it? Use GTK, with all related problems on the Windows platform, and tell your developers to start learning it? Nope, that's not what the typical boss is gonna decide. He'll let the developers use what they're used to, M$ visual studio, where they can click together the GUI. He'll tell the 3% of the customers that Linux isn't supported.

    And this is exactly what may change with Mono!

    And talking about the patent issue: Giving up on Mono because of potential patent issues would mean giving up on the patent issue itself. Mono could be the best "bad" example how software patents support a monopoly and limit interoperability. The fight against software patents isn't over yet. At least not in Old Europe.

    bye,
    Till

  • Mono needs some work (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bluefoxlucid ( 723572 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @12:03PM (#11668794) Homepage Journal

    Mono needs a bit of work to work with PaX [grsecurity.net], but it's possible. I mentioned the necessary changes [kaffe.org] to the Kaffe team; but they apply to any JIT.

    The issue is that a JIT compiler like Mono generates code at runtime. Because it's not generated in realtime (it's compiled at the loading of an executable module, one time), it's feasible to dump the executable code to a file on disk and mmap() it in.

    PaX won't allow code to be generated in memory unless the program has mprotect() restrictions off and uses mprotect() right. It's safer to rewrite the JIT compiler though, since you wind up with a stricter security policy that way.

    Furthermore, Exec Shield's NX emulation is flawed, and the use of mprotect() in those ways would disable the protections on large parts of the binary. If anything happens in or above the stack, the whole stack is likely executable. This is in fact one reason I prefer PaX; a slight modification to Red Hat's kernel to print X instead of - in /proc/[pid]/maps for !PROT_EXEC memory that's actually executable prints out a good deal of areas that are executable but shouldn't be (rwx vs rwX).

    Mono is flexible enough that C and C++ can be compiled to .NET. Microsoft supports this, as mentioned in earlier slashdot posts. It's really important to consider .NET and Mono as insecure, and to make sure they're adequately protected. If you're running all your programs in Mono and Mono has to disable PaX, then you lose the benefit of your GrSecurity-enhanced kernel. (same with ES).

    • Mono needs a bit of work to work with PaX, but it's possible. I mentioned the necessary changes to the Kaffe team; but they apply to any JIT.

      For the benefit of readers, those "necessary changes" are to require a JIT to generate shared libraries for each class that's loaded, and then dynamically load the shared libraries.

      That's fine for a JIT that is only used to generate static code for each class. But it's not efficient for dynamic optimisation techniques, such as run-time profile-driven code optimi

  • Platform independent? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @12:03PM (#11668801) Homepage Journal
    Can I just run a Mono app on Linux that was written on/for .NET? When Mono is in full release, that is.

  • Don't use .NET at all (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 14, 2005 @12:05PM (#11668818)
    The absolute major problem with the way I feel Miguel has handled the Mono situation is that he constantly refers to ".NET". It's as if he somehow thinks he's going to outsmart Microsoft or something. You can't beat Microsoft at embrace and extend, you have to change the game. .NET is a MARKETING TERM!!!!!!! Don't you remember when it originally got tacked on to every single Microsoft product? Saying Mono is an Open Source implementation of .NET is ignorant at best, and misleading and irresposible at worst. Just stick to C# and CLR and make no mention of .NET at all. Otherwise, they will continue to show me just how absolutely pathetically naive they (especially Miguel) are. .NET is basically Microsoft's brand, and Miguel will never establish authenticity, originality, etc. by latching on to a MS brand. Sure, take the best stuff, build on the shoulder of some giants, but have some !@#$ business sense. Doesn't he work for Novell now? He should have a powow with a marketing intern and receive some lessons on basic marketing.

    If they managed to do that, I might start to consider using it. It's a pretty amazing piece of technology, but don't let yourself be blinded to every other issue because of some neato tech toy fetish worship. As it is, I'm just appalled at how stupid they have been with this. They are just playing right into Microsoft's hands, sticking their head into the guillotine as Microsoft gives them some nice flowers to smell and pretty pictures to look at. Fucking so fucking pathetic.

  • What about wx? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by WarmBoota ( 675361 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @12:17PM (#11668910) Homepage

    I've a c# developer, and I'd be tempted to play with mono, but I have to wonder why Python with the wxWindows and wxGTK toolkits isn't getting more exposure.

    My biggest problem with Java apps is that they look equally bad on any given platform. Based on what I've seen with wxWindows and wxGTK, the apps look like native apps. Is Python missing something essential?

  • Python and QT (Score:5, Insightful)

    by codepunk ( 167897 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @12:25PM (#11668985)
    So what exactly is this going to get me over say something like using Python and the soon to be released gpl qt for windows? Python is a way more productive language than either C#,C,C++, java or VB so what is the benefit?, I just don't see it.

    • Re:Python and QT (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mrroach ( 164090 )
      As someone who is a big fan of Python and uses it almost exclusively, I can say that the static typing of C# and Java has one big advantage. It's not better bug detection at compile time, or some nebulous concept of "enterprise readiness", it's intelligent IDEs with autocompletion etc.

      I prefer GvR's ideas [artima.com] about static typing for Python 3000 better (basically, all type checking is done via interfaces), but it doesn't actually exist yet :-).

      -Mark

  • Cross platform apps and scripting (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rhalin ( 791665 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @01:33PM (#11669857)
    Mono may be a reimplementation of an MS product, even looking at the source, you'll notice a folder full of *nix implementations of windows API calls. But what does it really matter if it does the job you need it to?

    I started looking into it a few weeks ago when a project I was (am) working on required a scripting engine that could handle running scripts from anonymous sources, id est untrusted.

    We went through a large range of languages: python, perl, angelscript, php, lua, etc etc but ended up with a few rather large problems in all of them: either lack of sandboxing and protecting a system from the effects a script could have, or lack of documentation and user friendlyness for those who may not be too familier with programming (yes, we have to consider them)

    One of the dev's on the team brought up that .Net includes a set of security features that help to lock down scripts fairly tight, the problem being, our app has to be cross platform. This started us looking into Mono, which doesn't implement all the security features -yet-, but by our planned release date, they should be done, or very close.

    Another thing to consider, is that Mono will run any CIL compiled code, meaning that we can support a virtually innumerable count of languages, with very little excess implementation (find a compilier and link it into the project).

    So now we have: cross platform scripting (with sandboxing eventually), and the ability to present the users/programmers of the scripts with the syntax they are most comfortable with using.

    Not only that, but Mono is going to save us a fortune on our development costs, because we may be able to drop Qt GUI implementation from our project roadmap, which averaged about $6000 for each developer(Qt Enterprise with QSA), I believe, and had some -major- limitations on what you could use thier scripting language for (for example, you're not allowed to use it to expose features of Qt itself to the scripter, which may be neccisary for our project)

    Mono does the job, fits our specs almost perfectly, saves us money, and is built on CIL ECMA standards. What more -could- we ask?
    • "...when a project I was (am) working on required a scripting engine that could handle running scripts from anonymous sources, id est untrusted... This started us looking into Mono, which doesn't implement all the security features -yet-, but by our planned release date, they should be done, or very close."

      My friend, you have some big balls. You're going to release something which needs a lot of security when the underlying security bits are unfinished and thus cannot be tested. Good luck with that.

      "

  • These LugRadio guys... (Score:3, Funny)

    by RichDice ( 7079 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @03:21PM (#11671164)
    I've never heard these guys before. They're amusing and all, but they're kind of like the Bevis and Butthead of the Linux commentary world, aren't they?

    Cheers,
    Richard

  • Geekiness vs. Zealotry (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RichiP ( 18379 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2005 @12:48PM (#11679042) Homepage
    One of the things that hit me hard like a brick in the face is the disparity in the reaction of people claiming things under the name of the community.

    It's obvious to me from Miguel de Icaza and other Mono coders that what they're doing is as much for community as it is for their company. And yet this same community manages to react in opposite ways. Those who dislike a project (any project) will react from challenging the instigators with trying to prove their ideas work to downright maligning their efforts. On the other hand, people who like the project do their best to try and help out knowing it would benefit the community in the end.

    The odd thing is: it's the same project. The difference is in people. It's a tool that's not inherently evil. If people are divided in this case, it's by their own choosing.

    Whoever that blubbering guy is in LUGRadio that always has two reasons for anything, would you kindly reassess your intentions for making those comments as its clear from MdI's words what his are.

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