Mono Squeezed Into Debian Default Installation 503
pallmall1 writes "OS News reports that Debian developer Josselin Mouette got Tomboy accepted as a dependency for gnome in the next release of Debian (codenamed Squeeze). While that may seem like nothing big (except for the 50 MByte size of the Tomboy package), Tomboy requires Mono — meaning that Mono will now be installed by default. Apparently, Debian doesn't have the same concerns over using specifications patented by Microsoft and licensed under undisclosed terms that Red Hat does. Perhaps Debian doesn't believe that Microsoft might do something like Rambus did."
Frist (Score:4, Interesting)
Rolling Mono (note: Mono != Moonlight) into Debian would be beneficial for both Debian and Microsoft. I don't believe that Microsoft will take legal action against Debian or Miguel, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least considering Microsoft's recent suicidal business divisions.
Re:Frist (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems to me that, even if Microsoft threw a fit, the worst case scenario would be that they have to pull the package out of the releases.
I suppose it might be a bigger deal for Canonical, but even the craziest judge isn't going to impose some ridiculous punishment for actions they take on good faith.
FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
This particular outburst of concern is FUD. Debian already has Mono in the "main" repository (as opposed to "contrib" or "non-free"). That alone is a statement that they are not worried about the "free-ness" of the package. Even if it will now be installed by default, it was already made available by default to every Debian installation. The difference is very superficial.
If MS was going to go after them, they could have already. This changes nothing. (although this spat on /. might bring it to MS attention.)
Re:FUD (Score:4, Informative)
Mono itself has been in the Debian repos for a pretty long time and really isn't the issue here.
This particular "spat" is because Debian is making Mono a dependency of Gnome, with the only justification being that Tomboy (a post-it note application) requires it, which many people see as unnecessary.
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Evolution is written in C. It's another of Miguel's "abandoned" projects, as the man seems to be pathologically incapable of working on something until it's mature (see Gnumeric, the Bonobo component system for GNOME, Evolution).
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The biggest problem with this is that if mono is installed by default on systems that makes it more acceptable for ISVs to write their software for Mono/.NET which will hurt the (Debian or any other) platform if Microsoft suddenly decides to sue and Mono has to be removed.
That would not hurt Debian very much, because Debian is really big and doing .NET stuff isn't a significant activity for Debian users... For example, currently the sum of .net use is a 50 meg "notepad" application, I think Debian will survive if that has to be removed.
If it were removed, the ISVs that relied on it would be toast. From their perspective, not much has really changed, other than, possibly, temporarily, future Debian machines might have some version of mono/.net installed.
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Samba and Mono are the only technologies you listed that are an exact protocol/format/etc. clone of Microsoft's technology. Samba doesn't provide the strategic usefulness that Mono could if used widely in OSS.
There's a better alternative anyway: Java. Of which the official implementation is open source and the IP/Patents involved are legal for general use.
Whereas Microsoft's last words on the subject of Mono were that it's "an unauthorized reverse engineering of Microsoft intellectual property."
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If you want to hate it because it's Microsoft-designed tech, it's fine. But at least be consistent.
This probably summarizes the main concern.
"Never truth Microsoft". Not much else needs to be said about this.
You can deal with microsoft stuff if you thoroughly wash your hands after it. Samba is such a "realpolitik" project. But Mono, at times, seems like settling down at the Redmond sewers.
Linux no longer needs to "desperately" co-operate with Microsoft - internet & web apps rewrote the game. This was not the case when Mono was conceived. Also, back in the day there was not much happening in the cross
Call Upon the ECMA Code of Conduct (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps Debian doesn't believe that Microsoft might do something like Rambus did.
Rambus was chastised for their actions (like the linked article states). And I propose Debian approach this the same way someone would approach the Rambus situation from the beginning had they an inkling of Rambus' true intent.
.NET, MIcrosoft does hold at least one patent [uspto.gov] on the .NET infrastructure. So far, Microsoft has agred to offer these under a "reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) terms of use" and they are currently royalty free [msversus.org]. No one seems to be clear on how you get this into writing [itwire.com] but it's allegedly the way things are.
.NET. Should they fail to comply with this request in a timely manner, I would submit all communications with Microsoft to ECMA in a motion to dismiss the aforementioned "standards" and remove Mono--and unfortunately Tomboy--from the Debian default package. I'd beef up the Debian wiki [debian.org] with details on how to get these two packages to fix this bug and focus on the bug for a near future release after Squeeze.
Even though Microsoft submitted the CLI [ecma-international.org] and C# [ecma-international.org] main components of
Were I a Debian leader, I would simply approach Microsoft with the Mono code and the ECMA code of conduct [ecma-international.org] and demand it in writing that for this snapshot of the code you have a forever royalty free to interact with
At that point, sit back and let ECMA and the community at large hash it out with Microsoft. Better now than later when other things may depend on this package and Microsoft has you right where Rambus has every memory maker on the planet.
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Re:Call Upon the ECMA Code of Conduct (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft may just have .NET patents and contracts for their own sake, as SOP. Pragmatically, it would be a mistake for them to sue Debian or Miguel. I think they realize that because they haven't yet gone after Miguel.
Or they've already gotten him.
Re:Call Upon the ECMA Code of Conduct (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds to me like the "no bugs have popped up yet, so there are no bugs in the program" logic fallacy.
If one company of all has proven to follow the rule, that if they have some strange clause in the contract, and on asking about it, they say that it's just for safety and will never be used in reality, they intend to use it as early and as often as possible, then it's with no doubt Microsoft. (Health insurance companies would come to mind too.)
I think, given the happenings of the past, it is far more likely, that as soon as Mono became an essential part of Gnome, so that to remove it, you would have to kill Gnome entierly, Microsoft will load its weapons. ;)
Which means that soon, the argument of both troll teams (the pro-mono and the contra-mono side act very trollish, I must say), will be settley, and we can go back to VI vs Emacs. ;)
On another note: What's the point of Gnome again, now that Qt/KDE is open sourced? (Remember how Gnome started because it was not.) ;) :)
Oh well, I am always for more freedom (and more choice, if it helps freedom), so why not?
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Thing is, though, those nice UNIXy console programs often have a lot of optional parameters, because there are subtle details in doing something well. They are defaulted to sane values, because you don't usually need them, but when you do need them, it wouldn't be trivial to work around not having them.
What you call clutter on KDE is what an advanced user can use to optimize their workflow. The problem with Gnome apps is that they toss all those advanced options away. Not just hide them in a "Here be dragon
KDE and Gnome (Score:3, Insightful)
*On another note: What's the point of Gnome again, now that Qt/KDE is open sourced?*
To not be a cluttered piece of crap, which is KDE's job. See on UNIX, every program should do one thing and do it well.
I've always thought KDE's applications were much better than OpenOffice - and Gnome doesn't seem to have any productivity applications at all...
(I've run mostly KDE for a long time, though I have been running Gnome of late, on my new laptop - and I'm quite enjoying it...)
I really strongly feel that Unix lacks the coherent infrastructure needed for this "each tool does one thing well" philosophy... If each tool does just one thing, then your ability to accomplish things strongly depends on how effectively a
Re:Call Upon the ECMA Code of Conduct (Score:5, Interesting)
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Shouldn't patents be non-obvious, but easy to implement for a skilled professional in the field?
I though that XML web services were pretty obvious (given XML-RPC, SOAP, and every other web framework on the planet), but the difficulty in creating such a framework would be in the implementation.
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Re:Call Upon the ECMA Code of Conduct (Score:5, Informative)
I guess Tomboy is a nice test-case. But all that junk to install just for a note-taking program? Also, wouldn't it be nice if the Slashdot summary told me what Tomboy does?
The project page is a little more informative:
http://freshmeat.net/projects/tomboy [freshmeat.net]
Re:Call Upon the ECMA Code of Conduct (Score:5, Informative)
Tomboy is not 50MB, the whole Mono framework is that much, Tomboy is relatively small. If you use F-Spot or Beagle, Mono runtime is installed anyway.
And if you dont(most people), it's not installed. It's available in the repositories if you want it, why crap it into the base install?
Debian had reason to include Tomboy instead of Gnote. Also Tomboy does not have Applet support, which is why Debian wants it in the Gnome install instead of Gnote
Gnote 0.3.0 [figuiere.net] released 2009-04-29 adds applet support. Why use Tomboy at all now?
that's irrelevant (Score:5, Interesting)
Even though Microsoft submitted the CLI and C# main components of .NET, MIcrosoft does hold at least one patent on the .NET infrastructure.
First of all, they "don't hold a patent", they have filed a patent application. Whether that application gets granted remains to be seen, and even if it does, it's unclear what such a patent actually would cover or whether it could be enforced.
Furthermore, even if the patent were valid and enforceable, it is irrelevant as far as Tomboy is concerned, since Tomboy and most other Mono desktop applications don't use the ".NET infrastructure", they use ECMA C# libraries and standard Linux libraries.
Were I a Debian leader, I would simply approach Microsoft with the Mono code and the ECMA code of conduct and demand it in writing that for this snapshot of the code you have a forever royalty free
What's there to put in writing? You might as well demand Microsoft to put in writing that GNU C++, the Linux kernel, and Python are forever free from Microsoft royalties.
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Default installation? (Score:5, Informative)
Last I checked, the "default installation" of Debian didn't even include X. So I'm guessing what they really mean is that they've included it in the default repositories, and if you apt-get gnome you'll get tomboy and mono too.
Re:Default installation? (Score:4, Funny)
OS News reports that Debian developer Josselin Mouette got Tomboy accepted as a dependency for gnome
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Mono Squeezed Into Debian Default Installation
Incredible horrifying bloat (Score:5, Insightful)
tomboy package "Description: desktop note taking program using Wiki style links"
"..except for the 50 MByte size of the Tomboy package..."
What's wrong with this picture?
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Re:Incredible horrifying bloat (Score:4, Informative)
What's wrong with this picture?
You mean other than the fact that the statement is bullshit? I have a compiled version of Tomboy and it only comes out to around 5-6 megs. The 50MB size is them including all of it's secondary dependencies (which are used by other programs as well) to create a completely misleading picture.
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I have a compiled version of Tomboy and it only comes out to around 5-6 megs.
A 20 minute download for a note-taking app?
The 50MB size is them including all of it's secondary dependencies (which are used by other programs as well)
Used by other programs, true, but not necessarily those included as a dependency for the "typical" Debian desktop install.
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A 20 minute download for a note-taking app?
I don't know what internet connection you are on, but 50 MBs only takes 5-10 minutes on my pathetically slow DSL connection. If you mean the 6 MB that only takes a minute or two at most.
But, you don't seem to get the idea of dependencies. To put it with a different language, you are complaining that a program coded in Java requires a Java VM to run, or that a program coded in python requires a python interpreter.
Incredible horrifying dial-up (Score:2)
but 50 MBs only takes 5-10 minutes on my pathetically slow DSL connection.
In the country, 48 kbps dial-up is the norm, and 768 kbps DSL is blazing fast.
But, you don't seem to get the idea of dependencies. To put it with a different language, you are complaining that a program coded in Java requires a Java VM to run
If I am "complaining that a program coded in Java requires a Java VM to run", and I don't already have a Java VM, then I am complaining that the program was coded in Java in the first place.
Re:Incredible horrifying bloat (Score:4, Insightful)
Except these other programs are not included as a gnome dependency...
Re:Incredible horrifying bloat (Score:4, Informative)
You never see anyone include the sizes of dependencies like glibc, alsa, etc because they are pretty common across all applications. I mean honestly, find me a application that doesn't in some way depend on libc and I will be impressed.
The reason the size of all of a Mono app's dependencies are included is because they are only useful for running Mono apps.
In this case it is reasonable to include the size of Tomboy's dependencies because (so far) it is the only Debian-Gnome-required app that needs them.
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When dependencies are included, the picture gets a little muddy, but in this case, it's reasonable to do so. Essentially, since a default desktop install will pull in all of mono ONLY to satisfy tomboy's dependencies, mono's size needs to be added to the effective weight.
Things like glibc are not part of it's weight because it is used by a great many things by default and practically nothing can be installed without it.. Instead, glibc's weight is added to the weight of the minimum install.
Put another way,
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Monday 6 April 2009 15:39, by Rahul Sundaram :: # For Fedora, we had to remove tomboy from the live cd due to lack of space. Unfortunately, Gnote probably won't be a good replacement since it would pull in the gtkmm, boost and other dependencies. Have you considered Vala or PyGTK instead?
So the summary includes the dependencies for Tomboy but not for Gnote. If you add up gtkmm and boost and other dependencies, it might get close to 50MB. The summary is a troll for comparing apples to oranges.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Someone could rewrite it in native GTK/Gnome/SQLite in a few days I'm sure.
Seriously, the old "note dock" applet for WindowMaker was better, and that was 12 years ago.
Re:Incredible horrifying bloat (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Incredible horrifying bloat (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Incredible horrifying bloat (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed, that is my problem with Mono (or C#, for that matter) as well. We can't expect small, lean applications written in C# because of the language's design. C# is only good for writing code blazingly fast. Which is kind of silly to me, because as a semi-experienced programmer, I know that writing code is the easier part of software development.
So yeah, the more Mono/C# apps we get into Debian, the slower and memory-hungry (and disk-hungry, but I find that a non-issue in general) it gets. However, most people with enough RAM just 'meh' it out, after all, there is no such thing as Page's Law [wikipedia.org], right?
But it's not just Microsoft's products that bloat Debian. My personal windmills are applications like HAL, D-BUS, any gnome-*-daemon, any {Policy,Device,Console}Kit and so on. By the way, a useful hint - when a developer can't think of an original name and prefers to rip-off a name trendy at that time, expect the code to be as well thought-out as Nuka Cola Cherry.
(I get agitated when software bloat is discussed, I know.)
Re:Incredible horrifying bloat (Score:4, Insightful)
We can't expect small, lean applications written in C# because of the language's design.
Why not? What design feature stops this?
C# is only good for writing code blazingly fast. Which is kind of silly to me, because as a semi-experienced programmer, I know that writing code is the easier part of software development.
Indeed, you need readable, maintainable, performant code. Which is why I use C#. You were expecting perl maybe?
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What design feature stops that?
Code size: Well, C# is a pretty verbose language, much like Java. Usually you need to write a lot of "wrapping-paper" code to do what you need the program to do. That helps when you prefer a lot of subprojects that should behave alike, but that's not what we like to do in UNIX (We like to stitch our system together with small applications that do their tasks and only their tasks well.).
Application speed: Well, as far as I had the privilege of testing Mono/C#, it may perfor
Re:Incredible horrifying bloat (Score:4, Interesting)
> Actually, all of those are very useful,....
No, they might be useful someday. Today they are all semi-stable and almost totally undocumented black boxes that upend forty years of UNIX/POSIX tradition yet were pushed into production in this insane quest to be a better Windows than Windows and thus somehow bring about the Year of Linux on the Desktop.
So while all of the old understood ways of configuring a system have been tossed into the trash, the new replacements aren't ready for prime time. By ready I mean 'just works' at least 99% of the time and has clear documentation to permit a skilled UNIX admin to fix that last 1%.
Example: The hpt_37x driver has been broken[1] (massive data corruption) in Fedora's kernels since at least F8 and probably earlier. With a few tweaks the open source driver at Highpoint's website can be built and works. Your mission, get F11 to use it. I finally this did it this morning by editing /etc/sysconfig/mkinitrd and having it force the driver to load in the initrd phase before the *Kit bullcrap gets a chance to start.
[1] It isn't Fedora's fault. Kernel mailing list traffic shows a problem that has been fixed, regressed and fixed yet again, rinse and repeat a time or two. From what I can tell 2.6.30 may finally have it fixed but F11 shipped with 2.6.29.
Re:Incredible horrifying bloat (Score:5, Insightful)
.NET is an ENTIRE platform. You likely could have a whole system where this is the only accessible API. Just like Java. Would you fault, say uTorrent, for having 40 megs of win32 dependencies?
This is the unfortunate case of a
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Where do you get 231MB? That's the size of the full "redistributable" installer, including compilers, debugging tools, debug versions, etc. The actual size of the 2.0 runtime is 22.4MB
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0856EACB-4362-4B0D-8EDD-AAB15C5E04F5&displaylang=en [microsoft.com]
That's not 3.5, but 3.5 is a superset of 2.0, which is basically adding on stuff that the basic JRE doesn't have anyways like Workflow and WPF.
Also, why is it that Java also creates side by side installations? I h
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i would rather use a pencil & paper, just think pencil & paper does not require electricity or even a computer, but if i did want to store electronic information i would use somethhing a lot more simpler, vi, or leafpad, these Linux desktops [eg] gnome/kde4 have lost their way, they no longer represent what Linux
Yes, it's troll summary. (Score:3, Informative)
Monday 6 April 2009 15:39, by Rahul Sundaram :: #
For Fedora, we had to remove tomboy from the live cd due to lack of space. Unfortunately, Gnote probably won't be a good replacement since it would pull in the gtkmm, boost and other dependencies. Have you considered Vala or PyGTK instead?
So the summary includes the dependencies for Tomboy but not for Gnote. If you add up gtkmm and boost and other dependencies, it might get close to 50MB. The summary is a troll for comparing apples to oranges.
Looks more like Sid (Score:4, Informative)
The commit was done on Debian unstable, which is Sid, not Squeeze.
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What the F... (Score:5, Informative)
Am I missing something?
I've been using Debian for ..... 8+ years, since 2001, and I've NEVER heard anything about "GNOME" being in the "default" install. Anything resembling a "default" install would be the the Debian base system, which includes things like basic system files, core-utils, bash, pam, etc. Anything else is installed explicitly by the user (yes, installers make it easier, but still you need to choose the option). There are thousands of Debian desktop users who have no GNOME installed, and are either using KDE, or some other desktop environment.
Besides, isn't "tomboy" already included in the GNOME of Debian Lenny (the current stable release)? At least when I did an "apt-get install gnome" yesterday (source list pointing to lenny), it installed tomboy for me, together with the EVIL EVIL mono etc. And Debian has included mono as part of its repository for years. If it had licensing/patent concerns, there wouldn't be any difference whether it was in the "default GNOME" installation or not.
Argh.
Re:What the F... (Score:5, Insightful)
PS: From TFA (I confess not having read it in full before typing the above rant ... I did read TFA.... just not in detail ;-p)
The news got out via a blog post by Debian maintainer Robert Millan, who maintains the Gnote package for Debian - Gnote is a non-Mono replacement for Tomboy written in C++.
In other words, it's a non-story about two maintainers trying to get their packages accepted into the "default" installation (from TFA it sounds like it's an issue of what to include in the first CD). Yeah, raise patent concerns, size concerns, blah blah blah blah, but it all boils down to ego stroking and comparing dick sizes.
Duh.
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PS: From TFA (I confess not having read it in full before typing the above rant ... I did read TFA.... just not in detail ;-p)
The news got out via a blog post by Debian maintainer Robert Millan, who maintains the Gnote package for Debian - Gnote is a non-Mono replacement for Tomboy written in C++.
In other words, it's a non-story about two maintainers trying to get their packages accepted into the "default" installation (from TFA it sounds like it's an issue of what to include in the first CD). Yeah, raise patent concerns, size concerns, blah blah blah blah, but it all boils down to ego stroking and comparing dick sizes.
Duh.
Gnote is not just a non-Mono replacement of Tomboy, it's a line by line ripoff of Tomboy's C# code to C++ and GUI design. See http://robertmh.wordpress.com/2009/06/12/mono-in-the-default-install/ [wordpress.com] for screenshots. And the developers of Tomboy are not happy.
Our stance on Gnote is that it is counterproductive to maintain identical software in two languages. It will be harmful to the community, especially as these two apps inevitably diverge. It will result in duplication of effort, duplication of bugs, and a lot of wasted time for those who are trying to add value to the user experience. Tomboy is not going away, and it will continue to be developed on the extremely productive Mono/GTK# language platform. Anyone thinking about distributing Gnote should consider the impact on users and their data. When we develop, we should always be asking ourselves, "is this adding value for our users?"
Of course, it's under GPL so Gnote is within it's rights, but there's a thing called professional courtesy and respecting a developer's wishes.
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Re:What the F... (Score:5, Insightful)
If it runs faster and takes up less space*, who cares what the Tomboy developers think? May the better app win, I say.
*disclaimer: I have no proof that either of these are true, but it seems likely. If not, then Tomboy ought to thrive and Gnote will probably not gain many users anyway.
Re:What the F... (Score:4, Insightful)
If it runs faster and takes up less space*, who cares what the Tomboy developers think? May the better app win, I say.
*disclaimer: I have no proof that either of these are true, but it seems likely. If not, then Tomboy ought to thrive and Gnote will probably not gain many users anyway.
You are being too simplistic. Forks are more complicated than 'if Y is better than X then people will use Y and the world will be better'.
Consider this, what's the sole motivation behind the development of Gnote? It is to remove the Mono dependency, that's all, there's nothing more to it. And the work is relatively easy because all the heavy lifting has already been done by the Tomboy developers.
Say Gnote takes off and Tomboy dies, the motivation to improve Gnote is gone because the single goal of Gnote(i.e to kill Tomboy) has been achieved, and anyway, there is no more Tomboy to ripoff new ideas, code and GUI design from. Tomboy's developers are not happy with gnote now, so there's little chance they will jump ship to gnote.
So there's more to this than survival of the fastest and slimmest.
Re:What the F... (Score:4, Insightful)
Consider this, what's the sole motivation behind the development of Gnote? It is to remove the Mono dependency, that's all, there's nothing more to it.
Well, and what is wrong with that? If there is a demand to remove Mono dependency (and apparently there is), then the fork serves a useful purpose.
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Am I missing something?
I've been using Debian for ..... 8+ years, since 2001, and I've NEVER heard anything about "GNOME" being in the "default" install. Anything resembling a "default" install would be the the Debian base system, which includes things like basic system files, core-utils, bash, pam, etc.
If one installs, via tasksel, the "desktop" environment, GNOME is installed by default. One can certainly install another window manager/desktop environment, but unless one specifies another wm/de, one gets GNOME. From the Debian wiki: "You could simply mark the Desktop environment option. It will install the packages for Gnome and some packages that are considered "standard" for a Debian desktop." (http://wiki.debian.org/tasksel) It is in this sense that GNOME is in the "default" install.
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There are thousands of Debian desktop users who have no GNOME installed
I would wager that there are millions - if you count the Debian derivatives, like Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Xandros, Knoppix.... there must be at least a couple million non-Gnome Debian users.
An interesting read on the subject (Score:3, Insightful)
Not really being much of a Linux person myself yet, I was curious about the negative feelings I've read about for Mono, ranging from general dislike to outright hate, as I've had several people tell me that Mono is actually really cool and easy to use if you're used to doing .Net programing in general. Malevolentjelly posted this link a few days back in the Silverlight 3 post and I found it very informative:
http://www2.apebox.org/wordpress/rants/124/ [apebox.org]
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Then there's the technical aspect that mono will always be running behing the microsoft C#/CLI version, and so your Linux mono application
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They originated because of the way mono is conceived to lure Linux developers into using software whose api is completely controlled by Microsoft but without its blessing.
Yeah, so much of a lack of a blessing that it's provided the Mono developers with specifications for .NET/C#/Silverlight and its engineers have directly collaborated with the Mono developers. I'm pretty sure if you weren't giving your blessing that you wouldn't allow your engineers to collaborate with the project.
Once too many Linux packages depend on mono, I'm sure we'll get some patent/copyright saber-rattling from Microsoft.
So you claim, but we've been hearing that for 5 years now and the sky hasn't fallen yet Chicken Little.
Then there's the technical aspect that mono will always be running behing the microsoft C#/CLI version, and so your Linux mono application will generally not even run on Windows or if it's running will be unappealing because it feels old to the MS user.
This is bullshit. Every app I've written against Mono that doesn't use any of their extensio
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Surely it would be the other way around? Microsoft are extremely good at backwards compatibilty, and futhermore they haven't ditched the older versions of the .N
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Then there's the technical aspect that mono will always be running behing the microsoft C#/CLI version
That's assuming that one cares. Try to consider Mono as a platform of its own, forgetting about .NET entirely. It really makes much more sense that way (because then you can also consider Gtk# and other nice Mono-specific APIs).
nd so your Linux mono application will generally not even run on Windows
The easiest way to run your Linux Mono application on Windows is to run it in Mono for Windows...
If one wants to develop great crossplatform apps, use Qt [qtsoftware.com], it has all and more of the advantages, and none of the risks.
It has the disadvantage that it's a C++ toolkit, with all the associated problems such as overcomplicated (for most) language, and limited quality of tooling. There's a reason why higher-
Re:An interesting read on the subject (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as Microsoft retains any control over
Whatever Microsoft comes up with, it's either a fully integrated part of their software stack or too hot to get involved with. I don't want to get caught in the fallout of a patent lawsuit. That sounds paranoid but, well, Microsoft's actions so far have been fairly consistent.
Re:An interesting read on the subject (Score:4, Insightful)
A small counterpoint: XMLHttpRequest, the base call behind al things AJAX, is MS-originated; but it has evolved from that, and it's a widely complied de-facto standard. In fact, IE8 accepts the non-MS variant.
Mono, OTOH, is a great reimplementation of
Recently, thought, Mono has gained a few improvements over
Personally, not holding my breath, and I don't want Mono on my machines.
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Fair enough, but there is 1 issue that I have with .NET and its the same issue I had with Java: lock-in.
Remember the "100% pure Java" logos and disclaimers? The problem there is that they're telling you its ok to use Java, as long as you use Java too. You can do anything you want, as long as its written in Java. .NET is the same, though to be fair, the interop is better but I feel that is a legacy issue that MS will want to slowly use much less of, I see this already - if you write a GUI in .NET, WPF == .NE
Another good reason to use KDE (Score:5, Funny)
GNOME folks are really pushing the adoption of KDE 4 nowadays. :)
It is great to see so much friendship between open-source projects
what a troll (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently, Debian doesn't have the same concerns over using specifications patented by Microsoft and licensed under undisclosed terms
Microsoft has filed a patent on the .NET APIs, but Tomboy (and most Mono applications) don't use the .NET APIs, they use the ECMA APIs and standard Linux APIs. Mono is no different in that way from Python, Ruby, Perl, or many other languages people commonly use on Linux: it uses proprietary APIs on Windows, and open source APIs on Linux.
Furthermore, Mono is way ahead of languages like Java in that regard because, unlike Java, Mono is based on an open standard and there are no known patents on the language core or core libraries.
If anybody can point to an actual patent that Mono or Tomboy violate, please file an issue report against the Mono project; if it is credible, the infringing functionality will be removed from Mono. So far, nobody has been able to come up with anything.
Re:what a troll (Score:5, Informative)
Furthermore, Mono is way ahead of languages like Java in that regard because, unlike Java, Mono is based on an open standard and there are no known patents on the language core or core libraries.
Java is based on an open standard... the fully open-source reference JDK [java.net].
The reference JVM is also significantly faster than mono and somewhat faster than Microsoft CLR and has loads of somewhat useful other languages implementations that compile to it (Ruby, Python, Scala, Groovy, etc). So I'm not sure where you're pulling "way ahead" from.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This is literally true, but very misleading. Microsoft has ECMA bless .NET from time to time. Java has the Java Community Process. Yeah, sure, ECMA calls itself a standards organization, and the Java Community Process doesn't. If you look back at the history of Java, its big selling point from the beginning was that it was cross-platform, Sun fought intensely to make sure that it didn't get turned into a nonstandardized mess by MS, and Oracle's reference imple
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I know it is a bit old but, we'll file one once they publish which part they're going to patent
The patent system doesn't work that way. Anything that they could possibly patent would have had to have been filed years ago and is publicly available now.
Is it because .NET is a standard through an organized body? [ecma-international.org] Whereas, Java is basically a community process with Sun at the head of the community? [jcp.org]
Yes. Sun, in fact, promised ISO, ANSI, and then ECMA standardization. They ren
Try Gnote instead of Tomboy (Score:5, Informative)
Have you tried gnote yet? It is a C++ reimplementation of tomboy. gnote's binary package itself is less than 4MB with only a few standard dependencies that you might already have on a GNOME desktop, significantly smaller than Mono. I made the switch fully from tomboy to gnote a few months ago and things are working very nicely.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Gnote is not just a "re-implementation" of Tomboy, it's a line by line ripoff of Tomboy's C# code to C++ and GUI design. See http://robertmh.wordpress.com/2009/06/12/mono-in-the-default-install/for [wordpress.com] screenshots. And the developers of Tomboy are not happy.
If they didn't want people creating derivative works of their software, they shouldn't have released it as LGPL.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
True, but lots of clones and forks do hurt a project.
Too bad. Don't do things with your project that make too many people want to fork it, and you'll be fine. If a lot of forks appear, it just means you aren't fulfilling your users' needs. Which isn't even a bad thing! Forks are generally good, not bad.
And in this case, your comment is a bit of a straw man -- as far as I can tell, Tomboy has one single fork/clone. Unless you're going to argue that *one* is "too many," I don't see how it's a problem...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Using GPL code on another GPL ported program (to another programming language) is a ripoff? and I am using Gnote 0.3.1 and it has Applet support, Gnote is being converted from C# to C++, and features and plugins are being ported one by one
A line by line clone and completely identical GUI design to the pixel level and not respecting the developers wish can be called unethical even if it's legal under the GPL/LGPL. Most OSS developers won't mind some credit for their hard work. If Tomboy's developers do all the heavy lifting and Gnote just takes all of that and ports it line by line without adding any value except not having mono, that can be called a ripoff. Once Tomboy dies, Gnote might stagnate, because there is nothing more to ripoff and t
Red hat/Fedora improve, Debian/deb-based regress (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Just so everyone else isn't snowed by this post, Fedora has not dropped mono and currently has no plans to, they have only said "we'll continue to look at it with our legal counsel to see what if any steps are needed on our part". The recent push to include mono based Banshee by default instead of Rhythmbox in Fedora and Ubuntu was caused by the one of the main Rhythmbox developers saying that rhythmbox has "several limitations" and that he was going to "still fix (some) bugs and review patches, but it's to
Wrong. (Score:3, Informative)
> Mono Squeezed Into Debian Default Installation
It is not going into the Debian default installation. The Debian default installation does not include any "desktop environment". It is going into the Gnome "desktop".
awkward fact, may ruin exciting story (Score:5, Informative)
http://svn.debian.org/viewsvn/pkg-gnome/desktop/unstable/meta-gnome2/debian/control?revision=20303&view=markup [debian.org]
"Depends: gnome-desktop-environment (= ${source:Version}),
gdm-themes,
gnome-themes-extras,
gnome-games (>= 1:2.24.3),
libpam-gnome-keyring (>= 2.24.1),
gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly (>= 0.10.10),
gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg (>= 0.10.6),
rhythmbox (>= 0.12),
synaptic (>= 0.62),
system-config-printer (>= 1.0.0),
totem-mozilla,
swfdec-mozilla,
epiphany-extensions,
gedit-plugins,
evolution-plugins (>= 2.24.3),
evolution-exchange (>= 2.24.3),
evolution-webcal (>= 2.24.0),
serpentine,
gnome-app-install,
transmission-gtk,
bluez-gnome,
arj,
avahi-daemon,
tomboy (>= 0.12.2) | gnote,"
note: tomboy (>= 0.12.2) | gnote
In plain English that means tomboy *or* gnote.
It's Debian, you have a choice.
Debian also offers an Xfce/LXDE version of CD1 and a KDE version of CD1, CD1 being the installer. Neither of these offer mono or Gnome (duh!). Debian also offers fine grained package selection in all the installers, and a netinstall and a tiny netinstall, the businesscard iso. There is also the DVD installer which offers a choice of desktop environments along with the usual options for fine grained selection of packages, the 'Expert Install' option.
So *one* of the numerous ways of installing Debian *may* offer Tomboy to those who want it. Cue howls of intolerant, ill-informed, unsubstantiated quasi-religious outrage.....
And anyway mono is accepted as free software by the two bodies which are best placed to determine its status, the FSF and the OSI (and Debian Legal as well). Their legal teams have somehow failed to persuaded by psychotic ravings and are obstinately insistent in assessing these things by means of reason, facts, law and other little know methods. How churlish.
On the other hand it might be a far reaching conspiracy and have something to do with the Kennedy assassination, 9/11 and Roswell.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Free software relies on all kinds of sources. The GNU system itself was/is a re-implementation of UNIX. Many of the languages used started off as proprietary. There's nothing new in this. Where is the campaign to purge Fortran or Pascal from the free software opus? Why no campaign against Samba and the use of the SMB protocol? Why is nobody outraged at DotGNU? Where are the calls to cease supporting .avi container and other MS developments?
Essentially this hatred of mono is about its origin not its q
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
If that's true, could someone explain to me how MS.NET is "more free" than Qt?
The Real Question is (Score:3, Insightful)
What the hell is tomboy doing as a dependency in the first place? It's a totally unnecessary package which I have absolutely zero use for.
Re: (Score:2)
So, what's so good about mono?
Re:Yessss (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I see some interesting points but nothing explains why the free software community can't make their own mono, why Microsoft still can't use this against F/OSS, or why we should stop arguing.
It's more political bullshit...
"Many of those who advertise themselves as anti-Mono are, quite frankly, frightening. Calling for the deaths of Microsoft employees (see comments on Boycott Novell), or trying to have people who make positive comments about Mono fired (see recent comments on Ubuntu mailing lists), or making
Re:Yessss (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, Mono probably has "patents" against it.
So does every fricking application on the planet. 3D graphics? Patented. One click to buy? Patented. What's the bet that Microsoft has patents on half the Linux kernal?
Can't they just do what every other free software project does, and just ignore the bloody things?
Microsoft might sue, but they will probably just laugh. Nobody is going to re-implement the entire .net framework (including all the quirks of Microsoft's database layer, file system behavior, etc). Just look at the difficulties in getting data out of MySQL and PostGres in a sane way! Once you target a specific platform (i.e. the entire Microsoft stack) it's very hard to replicate.
Re:Yessss (Score:5, Insightful)
As a .NET developer (at work), and a Linux user (at home), I don't like this idea. I'm sure you are going to label me "a big rabid stallmanist troll" for pointing this out, but those patents are real, at least if you ask Microsoft. And so is the agreement that gives Novell permission to distribute Mono.
Now, why would Novell sign such an agreement? Easy: Because their legal department advised them to do so. From this we can conclude that Novells legal department has knowledge of legal risks concerning Mono.
Microsoft has already shown that their patents are not for self defence only, when they sued Tomtom over several patents related to the FAT filesystem. Not only is FAT old, there is also nothing about FAT, that isn't obvious to someone writing filesystem. In other words: FAT is not even patent worthy. The .NET framework, however, represents a great value for Microsoft (for one thing, it's the first Windows API that doesn't suck big time), and it's got to have several patent worthy ideas in it.
So, why would Microsoft want to protect something worthless like FAT, but not real value like the .NET framework?
As I see it, it's not a question about if they are going to sue someone over the .NET patents. It's a question of WHEN and WHOM.
Re:Yessss (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Slow news day (Score:4, Insightful)
Proven? Really? What's the proof? That Microsoft hasn't sued yet? That doesn't stop them from suing in the future. I'm not aware of any 'proof' that the Mono fear is stupid. If anything, I used to not be too worried about Mono, until Microsoft sued TomTom for their use of Linux. That was NOT a lawsuit over Mono, but rather over VFAT and some other stuff. But, it proved that Microsoft is willing to use stupid patents to sue Linux users. So, now I'm worried that in the future, they will decide to sue over Mono. What would stop them if they should decide to sue?
Estoppel (Score:2)
What's the proof? That Microsoft hasn't sued yet? That doesn't stop them from suing in the future.
There is a "use it or lose it" doctrine at equity, called estoppel by acquiescence [wikipedia.org] or laches [wikipedia.org]. (And it's not just for trademarks.)
Re: (Score:2)
Plus, it took them ages to start suing over VFAT. That still didn't help TomTom. Any concerns over
Re: (Score:2)
I don't see how this wins anyone anything.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Python is awesome. Linux is better for having it around.
Fixed it for ya.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What, exactly, is Microsoft going to do with this information?