Banshee, Mono May Be Dropped From Ubuntu Default 255
itwbennett writes "The Banshee music application, and Mono, the open source implementation of Microsoft's .NET framework, on which Banshee is dependent, may be excluded from the next release of Ubuntu. In 'a blog entry titled Bansheegeddon,' Banshee and Mono developer Joseph Michael Shields says the reasons given for the change are that Banshee is 'not well maintained' and 'porting music store to GTK3 is blocked on banshee ported to GTK3.' Other reasons mentioned but not in the session logs are complaints that it doesn't work on ARM. Ubuntu Community Manager Jono Bacon pointed out in a blog post that the decision to drop Banshee, Mono or other apps that are dependent on Mono has not been finalized. But the blogosphere is lit up with speculation that this is a deliberate move to exclude Mono because of its emulation of Microsoft .NET."
Wasn't it only recently... (Score:3)
...that Banshee was made a default? ffs, make up your mind, Ubuntu people.
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Re:Wasn't it only recently... (Score:4, Funny)
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And we're all grateful for that. Imagine if Microsoft had come out with their own version of the Windows shell and server atop linux? Think of having to explain to the PHBs that you don't *want* to run MS-linux on a server?
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You might want to hold off on the opensuse - because lately every in-place update I've done has b0rked something. It's looking more and more like linux has equaled Windows in one area - you'll need to do a clean install instead of an update to get everything working.
Supposedly, a week from tomorrow (November 18th) Opensuse 12.1 will be out, with "over 12,000 bug fixes." Which means "Don't touch it for a month because ..."
Also, that's a polite way of saying "11.4 has over 12,000 bugs in it." And Open
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If you read the comments on the earlier article about FreeBSD on the desktop, apparently flash is okay (no reason it shouldn't be). The various desktops are also available - you have to install them, but that's not that big a deal.
Good luck, but for consumers, the best choice probably would be to pick a distro, do an install, and then just never upgrade to the next release - just security updates. Opensuse defaults to that strategy.
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You want Flash support on FreeBSD? Easy as a breeze. Since Flash is proprietary and Adobe doesn't make a version for FreeBSD - in fact, sometimes they even forget about Linux for a while and let it lag behind the Windows version, right? (BTW, you come across as very proud that Linux relies so much on that proprietary tech)
So you do the work around. See, FreeBSD devs are intelligent. So what they did is create something called "Linux Emulation Layer". What this is is basically a Linux distro that is installe
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Ubuntu has used OpenJDK by default for quite some time .. the Oracle / Sun JDK has been relegated to the partner repository for that time, and only recently dropped.
Despite dire warnings about compatibility, the only issues I've had with using OpenJDK over the Sun JDK have been due to bad programming on the project I'm working on (things like serializing Swing components, which you're specifically told not to do).
Good thing, too (Score:5, Insightful)
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To my knowledge, Gnote doesn't do sync like Tomboy does.
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Tomboy. I live by Tomboy.
To my knowledge, Gnote doesn't do sync like Tomboy does.
+1 to this. Personally, I think banshee's interface is a bit nicer than rhythmbox, but I could happily live with either. But so long as I don't have a replacement for Tomboy (an intuitive, usable notes application with sync functionality), my PC will have mono on it.
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Not to mention that Ubuntu dropped GIMP from the default installation.
Apparently AC missed the Mono connection.
Honestly, if Banshee had worked better for me, I would be using that instead of Rhythmbox, but it crashed often. It makes no difference to me whether Mono is used or not in that particular application.
The original post questioned why there was a need for Mono at all. I gave Tomboy as an example, because it does something that the non-mono Gnote can't do. If there were a non-mono note-taking application that let me sync, use on other platforms (Win, Android (albei
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Re:Good thing, too (Score:5, Informative)
Besides, who needs Mono when you can write cross-platform apps with Qt? Stuff like automatic garbage collection isn't enough to get me using
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It's a port. It's great.
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Mono has other uses besides Banshee support. I use it for Keepass2 which allows my to use a kdbx file on all of my machines and not have to mess around with import/exports.
Last year I tried Banshee and many others (Score:3)
I wanted to play a list of finely normalized (volume-adjusted) tracks using both replaygain and crossfading.
Banshee and RB were very buggy with crashing, jumping to odd tracks w/o shuffle turned on, even playing multiple tracks at the same time. I consider them unusable for anything.
And then Amarok, my old regular from the KDE 3 days, had been lobotomized to the point of being unable to handle normalization. But I had switched to Gnome and didn't want to use 150+ MB extra ram to play some audio tracks anywa
No Mo Mono (Score:3)
So?
But, the Blogosphere likes creating controversy (Score:2)
.. and spreading it, even when there is none.
I don't remember the link now, but Microsoft made an irrevocable promise not to sue implementations of .NET, under certain specified conditions.
What about MS proxies? Like Acacia? (Score:2)
Considering Microsoft's shamefull history, it's hard for me to fully trust Microsoft.
Re:What about MS proxies? Like Acacia? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are going to go down that road, then theres pretty much no one you can trust.
How do you figure? He's simply judging them by their reputation and past actions. Why would you not do that for any person? Don't tell me Microsoft isn't a person either, because that's not really true. For instance, judging IBM by their past actions (WWII, PS/2 computers, etc.) would be pretty silly, because for their WWII sins, everyone involved is long-since dead now, and for their lame actions in the 90s with trying to push proprietary junk on everyone when clones were taking over, again, the people in charge are long-since gone (probably not dead though, but not with the company either). Most corporations change leadership periodically, so it's not sensible to hold grudges against them indefinitely. This isn't true of Microsoft: that company has been run by the same two guys ever since it started: Bill and Steve. Bill's not even gone; when Steve was too dumb to make his own decision about Courier, he called in Bill to make the decision for him. So any past bad actions that MS has done are fair game for criticizing it now, and this will remain true until they finally get some new leadership, which doesn't look like it's going to be any time soon.
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Re:But, the Blogosphere likes creating controversy (Score:4, Informative)
the promise was made to Novell which licenced .NET. Anyone who dowloanded Mono from Novell would be protected (with the implication that anyone who got it non-Novell sources would not be protected, I don't know if that'd stand up in court, but it was used as an excuse against using Mono by various people)
Now Novell no longer exists, I'm not sure where the promise went, or the licencing agreement they had. Perhaps de Icaza's spin-off company has it, maybe Attachmate has it.
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under certain specified conditions.
Yeah, exactly. Don't follow Microsoft's lead unless you want to get burned. Everything they do revolves around their desktop monopoly.
Gotta fit on a CD (Score:2)
Whatever Ubuntu includes, they insist it fit on a CD (for better or worse.)
The Mono runtime libraries and Banshee together are over 15 megs. Then consider the size of Gtk+2, and the case to leave it off the disk makes a lot of sense.
(Of course once you've installed Ubuntu it's not very difficult to install Banshee, Mono, etc. on your own.)
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disk space isn't as premium as it used to be.
it is if you're running on a phone or tablet, that flash-drive space is pretty precious.
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I thought that, as with this idea of dropping Banshee was just an idea posited at UDS, rather than a decision that's been taken? They wanted to come up with plans of what to do with the rest of a 1GB/2GB USB stick.
Re:Gotta fit on a CD (Score:4, Informative)
That's the point. "Album Artist", which is different from "Artist", is always the same in every track of the album, so grouping works.
For example, in the Pulp Fiction soundtrack [musicbrainz.org], each music has a different Artist, but the Album Artist in all of them is "Various Artists", so the tracks are kept together.
Makes perfect sense (Score:3, Insightful)
This makes perfect sense. Almost nothing depends on mono anymore. Ditch the last holdouts, replace them with alternatives without the taint and move on. Besides, Ubuntu has made it clear they see tablets as THE future and tablets run ARM. So they really can't afford to offer a second class status to ARM and thus anything that isn't portable to it has to go from the default experience.
If they were removing mono from the repository or moving it to non-free or something there would be a story here, but they ain't so there isn't.
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You do realize that Mono does run on ARM? Heck, Xamarin makes its money primarily from running Mono on ARM systems (among other things, the iPhone/iPad). So, claiming that Mono is being disqualified because it doesn't run on ARM tablets doesn't really hold water.
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In fact, if you're a switch from x86 focus to ARM focus then Mono makes even more sense. Like Java, the binaries use an architecture-agnostic bytecode (CIL, or Common Intermediate Language) which is JIT compiled at first execution, with optimizations speciic to the platform it runs on (well, .NET has those optimizations, I assume Mono does too). No need to recompile your apps when switching platforms, or store multiple copies of an app in the repository to account for different architectures.
Re:Makes perfect sense (Score:5, Informative)
It runs on ARM with caveats and bugs [ubuntu.com]. In particular, apparently it only supports single-core ARM systems - if you try and use Mono on a dual-core ARM, it will crash because the code it generates is SMP-unsafe. It also sounds like it's incredibly buggy even without this problem.
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LoB
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Getting so tired of hearing this. There is nothing wrong with Mono on ARM. Nothing.
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What taint? Sorry. Confused.
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This makes perfect sense. Almost nothing depends on mono anymore. Ditch the last holdouts, replace them with alternatives without the taint and move on.
The "taint"? I assume WINE and Samba are next.
Not very Linux-like (Score:2)
Since when has Linux been about "production" code only in distros? Projects should, and have, made into distros based on demand, not based on whether they have an RTM stamp. Great example: apt-get install nodejs (unless you update apt, it installs an old version, no less)
I can get not installing it based on the fact that it targets libraries that drive for-profit philosophy, but at least call it that. Of course, then why is there still wine? samba? tsclient? All of these support and encourage Windows use.
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Not to mention tons of non-Windows devices use SMB nowadays. Samba really has transcended what MS does with it at this point.
Avoiding MS patent aggression should be Linux like (Score:3)
After nearly a decade, MS is still involved in the scox-scam. This in spite of the facts that linux is not infringing, and scox doesn't own the code anyway. Any steps linux can take to avoid patent parasites, like MS, should be taken.
Re:Not very Linux-like (Score:5, Insightful)
I can get not installing it based on the fact that it targets libraries that drive for-profit philosophy, but at least call it that. Of course, then why is there still wine? samba? tsclient? All of these support and encourage Windows use.
It's minor, but I disagree with this notion.
Interoperability and compatibility are good things. There are situations where your end-users must run software available only for Windows. Wine is constantly improving. Still, not all things fitting this description run well in Wine, and many production environments don't want to struggle with getting them to work based on forum posts etc. when it is known that simply running Windows avoids all of this. Remember that to a Fortune 500 corporation, the cost of a Windows license is less than marginal but the cost of downtime can be significant.
I don't like this and I don't like Windows and I'm not fond of Microsoft, but this is a reality. Things like Samba open up new options that may not have been available before. So you're stuck with Windows for your end-user workstations? At least now your servers can be Linux. That's one more Linux system than you would have been able to use if you had no Samba (et al) equivalent.
Interoperability means you can pick the best system for the particular job knowing it will work with the rest of your systems. There's a freedom in this that you just don't get without it. Without interoperability you're much more at the mercy of vendorlock. The only thing that's a shame is that interoperability is always a one-way street when you deal with a monopolist. Interoperability today means it is always Linux's job to accommodate Windows protocols and filesystems. Microsoft is terrified of merit-based competition on an open playing field with no vendorlock, proprietary protocols, or other cheap tricks designed to prevent evaluation of merit.
When that changes, everyone will benefit. There is no concern about "encouraging Windows use" for those cases where it really is the best tool for the job; nor are there such concerns when it isn't and you can easily replace it with something more suitable.
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Samba, at least, is basically covered by the EU threats to Microsoft. I'm not really worried about using it because if MS tried anything funky, they'd have one of the largest trade organizations on the planet pounding them into the Earth.
But Mono, not only does it suck donkey balls, but there are no real protections beyond Microsoft's word.
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Microsoft has access to legal resources far beyond most companies. Thanks but no thanks. There are alternatives to .NET clones sufficient that whatever real or illusory advantages to it, it simply is not necessary to touch Mono at all.
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What about when a company has spent tons of money building out C# libraries - I think Mono gives them a migration path. Migrations (in this case, to open source alternatives) are more likely to get green-lighted when pieces of infrastructure can move, rather than all-or-none.
Then again, not sure in an enterprise how relevant baked-in Ubuntu packages are, or Ubuntu itself for that matter ... after all, there's nothing preventing anyone from bringing in Banshee, mono, etc ...
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Even Richard M Stallman doesn't object to Mono being developed as a way to run formerly Windows-only applications on Linux - but that's not how it's used. Instead applications intended to run on Linux are developed using Mono and then people get to take advantage of its cross platform nature to run them on Windows easily as well. Sometimes they actually run better on Windows because Mono's performance sucks.
Default (Score:3, Informative)
A lot of people forget that when something is excluded from the default installation of Ubuntu, that doesn't mean that you can't install that feature later.
distrowatch (Score:5, Informative)
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It is now number 2 behind mint! Which "is an Ubuntu-based distribution"
What's your point? Debian is below Ubuntu, and Ubuntu is a Debian-based distribution.
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I kinda like what the middle man has done, letting me go from an install CD to a working -- like not just boots but nearly all hardware functioning as well -- Debian-based linux installation.
The main thing I love Debian for is apt, and that's still there after installation is done.
'Course, much love for Debian anyway. I used it alone for years, and may try it again since my desktop continues to not be the tablet Unity seems to have been designed for.
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looks like ubuntu finally dropped off the #1 spot in the rankings on the right hand column
And what surpassed it is Mint, which is basically Ubuntu++
What does that imply?
sudo apt-get install banshee (Score:3, Informative)
sudo apt-get install banshee
Is it that fucking hard?
Deliberate move... (Score:2)
lit up with speculation that this is a deliberate move to exclude Mono because of its emulation of Microsoft .NET
No, once apply Occam's Razor and ignore the conspiracy angle it's quite obvious that it's "a deliberate move to exclude Mono because" it sucks dead dingo kidneys.
(Cue the pedants who will argue into the wind about an improper usage of Occam's Razor. a.k.a. Howler Monkeys [theoatmeal.com])
Great! Depending on Mono is a mistake (Score:5, Insightful)
Mono has its uses - it could help people remove .Net dependencies from their software packages.
But for new software packages, choosing a Microsoft technology is a mistake. Microsoft calls free software an enemy - "cancer" to be "extinguished", so building on their technologies is folly, especially when there are lots of non-Microsoft languages and frameworks that we can use. The problems of software patents are only getting worse, so we need to prepare for the future by applying some caution today.
I hope this is indeed the real reason for taking Mono-dependent software out of Ubuntu.
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Mono [swpat.org]
Alas (Score:2)
After even writing a howto on removing mono from Ubuntu... I have it installed now, so that I can have autopano-sift to use with Hugin.
Proof there is a God. (Score:3)
Ubuntu dropping mono is proof that there is a God and He loves us.
My apologies to Benjamin Franklin.
Not good (Score:2)
Canonical can't seem to decide what to do with its selection of default software. I found an insightful comment from OMGUbuntu that I thought I should share:
Re:Did we start liking Mono, and I missed it? (Score:5, Funny)
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The less Microsoft in Linux, the safer it is to use. If some programmers need to learn a real language in order to deal with that, then guess what? They will have to. There isn't a shortage of languages leading to a requirement to use Mono.
I applaud this move and hope other distros follows. Mono has no place in Linux. It is an EEE torpedo of the worst kind.
Re:Did we start liking Mono, and I missed it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Having a language ratified as an ECMA standard is fairly binding I find. You might want to update your trolling.
Mono has always been substandard and playing feature catch-up compared to the actual .Net runtimes available only for Windows.
.Net cross-platform from the start and released their own Linux version at the same time each Windows version was released? Answer: they could if they wanted to.
.Net with no "yeah but ..." differences would make it easier for popular applications to not *require* and *depend on* Windows. That would not serve Microsoft's interests. Letting other people do the Linux work for them in a way that will never be complete serves two goals: 1) costs them nothing and 2) makes people like you feel a baseless goodwill towards a monopolistic corporate giant that plays to win.
This is what was intended. Even if you can't admit it. Just ask yourself, with all the resources and talent available to Microsoft, why they couldn't have simply made
Obvious conclusion: they don't want to because a truly cross-platform
If you actually look at the facts of the situation the intention is not difficult to understand. But what the fuck ever. If you want to be naive it's your choice.
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Just ask yourself, with all the resources and talent available to Microsoft, why they couldn't have simply made .Net cross-platform from the start and released their own Linux version at the same time each Windows version was released?
Likely yes, but what would be the return on such an investment?
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Microsoft actually does contribute code to mono. The missing components are mainly either deprecated or windows specific; for 99% of applications it's good enough. Troll harder.
I don't know a lot about .NET vs. Mono, but can you address this part before you call "troll"?
Just ask yourself, with all the resources and talent available to Microsoft, why they couldn't have simply made .Net cross-platform from the start and released their own Linux version at the same time each Windows version was released? Answer: they could if they wanted to.
If you could invalidate that question you'd really have a case for GP being a troll. As it stands you seem to have selectively glossed over it. I know people around here love to cherry-pick what they respond to, but it really weakens your case.
Microsoft really does have a lot of wealth and a lot of highly talented programmers. It's not a question of whether they could or couldn't. I mean, they could have don
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Just ask yourself, with all the resources and talent available to Microsoft, why they couldn't have simply made .Net cross-platform from the start and released their own Linux version at the same time each Windows version was released?
They should have. I think it was a strategic blunder not to, from a Machiavellian viewpoint, because all they needed to do was pretend to play nice with multi-platform and then yank the rug out once they achieved marketshare. They did this with IE [wikipedia.org].
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Because Microsoft isn't obligated to make anything cross platform. They provided the means to for us to make it ourselves. Giving everyone a true implementation of .NET instead of leveraging it as a bonus of Windows does not make a lot of business sense for them, regardless of the good will we think it might garner (but more than likely people would be too afraid to use Microsoft's implementation anyway, bringing us full circle to now). Just because they want the true implementation of .NET to be a core ass
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Also, since I completely spaced on this fact: Microsoft did release an implementation of the CLI which was cross platform, and one of its intended goals was to help those who intended on creating their own implementation.
This is another reason why I don't think these dreaded lawsuits always supposedly looming over Mono will never come.
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Saying things like this:
If you actually look at the facts of the situation the intention is not difficult to understand. But what the fuck ever. If you want to be naive it's your choice.
Is absolutely trolling.
As someone familiar with Microsoft's long history of abusive, illegal, and Machiavellian behavior as well as their preference for long-term strategy over hasty decisions ... I really do agree that it's naive to expect any form of goodwill from them, or that they would ever do anything that they don't believe gives them a way to put their competitors at a disadvantage. They're not a charity and they're not a community. That's okay because they generally don't pretend to be.
I don't subscribe to this cult
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Normally the generic form is a source-code tarball
Have fun. [microsoft.com]
I don't believe Microsoft has any plans to ever sue anyone using Mono, and I absolutely don't believe it's Microsoft's responsibility to make a linux version of .NET. That said, your little link is disingenuous as you are not allowed to use that source code to create Linux packages, or really use it to create any modified version at all. Here are the relevant parts of the license under which that source is released, with additional emphasis placed by me:
The Microsoft Reference Source License (MS-RSL) is the most restrictive of the Microsoft source code licenses. The license prohibits all use of source code other than the viewing of the code for reference purposes...Microsoft commonly uses this license for developer libraries where modification is not required to make use of the source code. In these cases, the importance of transparency is based on the need for developers to more deeply understand the inner workings of the source code...The license limits the source code release to use on the Windows platform only.
The full license text, lest I be accused of taking w
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Saying things like this:
If you actually look at the facts of the situation the intention is not difficult to understand. But what the fuck ever. If you want to be naive it's your choice.
Is absolutely trolling. I can't speak for decisions I didn't make, but I can guess. Linux is an very fragmented platform. Getting a major piece of software to work across different distros often requires hacks and changes specific to each one. It's very rarely just a matter of recompiling and it's good. If you follow some of the microsoft blogs (windows 8 for example), one of the most common questions they get asked is why didn't you include feature X. The response is usually along the lines of not enough people would use it to be worth the effort. No company has enough resources to implement everything that everyone ever wanted.
So how is it that Mozilla can do it and Microsoft cant? I see their flagship Firefox on Windows, OSX, many versions of Linux including Android, Runs fine in Gnome, KDE, XFCE etc. So tell us what resources do Mozilla have that Microsoft does not?
What does that have to do with anything? (Score:2)
Isn't Java ratified as an ECMA standard? Yet Google is being sued by Oracle for using Java.
Just because MS has no case does not mean that MS can not cost you many millions in legal fees. Are you familiar with MS-funded scox-scam?
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No. In fact, there are still a lot of pissed off people because Sun said they were going to standardize it.. they created working groups and lots of people invested a ton of time into it.. then at the last minute Sun pulled out and changed their mind. They did the same thing with the ISO as well.
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Having a language ratified as an ECMA standard is fairly binding I find.
Mono, and the .NET framework they seek to implement, is much more than what was standardized in ECMA. Windows Forms is one example.
Re:Did we start liking Mono, and I missed it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Having a language ratified as an ECMA standard is fairly binding I find. You might want to update your trolling.
While ECMA supposedly requires that all patented technologies standardised by them be made available under a "reasonable and non-discriminatory terms", you might want to note the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] which states that parts of .Net *not* covered by ECMA include "Windows Forms, ADO.NET, and ASP.NET". Even if the ECMA-standardised parts of .Net are safe from patent infringement, this doesn't necessarily cover the rest.
.Net applications *will* be written assuming the whole ecosystem is available. One may argue that the core ECMA-covered parts are useful in themselves, but I suspect that this will miss what most people want (and expect) ".Net compatibility" to deliver. This is in addition to MS being in control of the language and thus always one step ahead of the competition.
And realistically,
Re:Music players on Linux SUCK (Score:4, Informative)
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I have to agree with that. I have been looking for a Podcast player/manager to replace Rhythmbox (very buggy, lacks plenty features, can't stop it from reencoding some tracks when copying to MP3 player, ...) and rather shockingly most alternatives where even worse. The most promising alternative so far seems to be Guayadeque, but it's not exactly bug free either and the GUI has written "programmer art" written all over it.
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Funny, I was reflecting recently on the fact that I can't find a descent non-iTunes way to manage my iPod (classic) on Windows. Linux is just lousy with them, from function-specific and clunky-but-usable (gtkpod) to the full-fledged media managers with support (Amarok).
The closest thing I can find on windows is SharePod, and it sucks. Hard.
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+1, this saves me time. And good riddance to Banshee, such a slow POS that is.
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Nice, never thought of that before. "After this operation, 75.8 MB disk space will be freed." Au revoir mono. :)
And it was nice to find out Gnote, a C++ replacement for Tomboy.
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Also I use Eye of Gnome to replace that shitty photo previewer that uses Mono.
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+1, this saves me time. And good riddance to Banshee, such a slow POS that is.
Seriously. When a music player decides it needs to be able to play DVDs, it's time to move on.
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It doesn't work on the omap4 apparently according to Canonical which is what they are targeting for tablets and phones.
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Microsoft has stated that they won't sue over C# usage, and they've demonstrated no inclination whatsoever toward doing so. Nobody has ever presented evidence that they will - only vague accusations about how EVILLLL Microsoft is.
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Well they can't sue over C# usage. They can't stop someone from creating their own C# compiler. But they can still hypothetically cause a world of grief over .NET-like functionality. Judging by the lack of interest in a C# compiler outside of Mono, I'm guessing the wonderfulness of C# is not so great that there's a huge push to see native C# compilers or Java byte code compilers for C#.
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Considering how Microsoft released a shared-source licensed cross-platform implementation of the CLI, of which one of its express purposes was to assist those in creating their own implementations, I really doubt Microsoft intends on suing over anything .NET specific. To me all this fear over how Microsoft will bring wrath if Linux even so much at looks at Mono (even though popular distros have been including mono for years without incident) seems like a whole lot of unnecessary FUD.
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A ton of games use Unity, which basically makes your game run on mono. Microsoft's own WP7 can't run Unity, and that's one of the major complaints of indie game developers on that platform. It'd be in Microsoft's best interests for its mobile platform to apply the screws to Unity as well, but they haven't done so. Neither have they done so with any of the apps that use MonoDroid, MonoTouch, or MonoMac. I just don't see the evidence that they'd do that. Maybe they would, but I wouldn't bet on it if I had to
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Same here, Why is this even news??