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Winner:
Visual Studio

How can Visual Studio be the best IDE for Ubuntu if both it and its defining .NET Framework can only be natively installed on Windows?! I guess that this refers to Visual Studio Code, an enhanced code editor which has little to do with Visual Studio. Apparently, the best Linux alternative for Visual Studio is MonoDevelop.

Electron based editors are all the rage now and can do alot of MonoDevelop and more. Atom.io, Microsoft Visual Studio Code (ironically), and I think Brackets as well. True the real Visual Studio has tools for groupware and advanced testing but Atom.IO has A TON of add-ons that do so so much. Web developers will not touch something like VS 2017 or Monodevelop after using one of the 3 above or Sublime.

Winner: Visual Studio

How can Visual Studio be the best IDE for Ubuntu if both it and its defining .NET Framework can only be natively installed on Windows?! I guess that this refers to Visual Studio Code, an enhanced code editor which has little to do with Visual Studio. Apparently, the best Linux alternative for Visual Studio is MonoDevelop.

Just use Mono - "... an IDE primarily designed for C# and other .NET languages. MonoDevelop enables developers to quickly write desktop and ASP.NET Web applications on Linux, Windows and Mac OSX. MonoDevelop makes it easy for developers to port .NET applications created with Visual Studio to Linux and to maintain a single code base for all platforms." http://www.monodevelop.com/

just use http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/ or http://monodevelop.com/ .

By the way, for those who haven't looked at it recently, MonoDevelop has come a -long- way. It's feature-comparable to Visual Studio, nowadays.

Please tell me it's not screenshot compatible, because that's the ugliest freaking mess of a horrid GUI editor that I've encountered. Otherwise, no wonder I've seen so many Windows devs with multiple huge monitors: they'd need them to be able to see a useful amount of code at one time. Seriously, those screenshots dedicate, what, 20% of the window to actual content?

"To be honest, Java needs to die already. Everyone will be better off."

Except those that run a platform that lacks support (either no support or some outdated version).

I'm programming in this right now:
http://www.mono-project.com/Start

And the IDE is absolutely terrific:
http://monodevelop.com/

Cool! Can I use this C# language to create desktop apps that run without modification on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows?

yes: http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page.

You have a choice between Windows Forms or GTK as the widget toolkit. Both are supported on X11, Win32, and OSX.

Is there a cross platform IDE for this C# language that allows me to develop in the same IDE on Linux as my colleagues do in Windows or OS X?

yes: http://monodevelop.com/

I installed it under OS X when I was doing MonoTouch development. I actually had zero problems with it.

Are you sure you weren't downloading the Linux binary that probably came with native support for Linux or some garbage? It even comes with an installer.

Mono Download Page - Select Mac OS X (includes Gtk#, as required for by MonoDevelop)
MonoDevelop Download Page - Select Mac OS X

Install in order. Voila.

http://monodevelop.com/Download

seems to show an OS X build.

That is precisely the version I tried most recently. You cannot build any of the GUI template solutions other than the glade one and there is no GUI editor in the OS X version because of a bunch of GTK dependencies.

http://monodevelop.com/Download

seems to show an OS X build.

http://monodevelop.com/ http://www.icsharpcode.net/opensource/sd/ http://csharp-studio.sourceforge.net/ http://xacc.wordpress.com/ That would be four other c# IDE's three of which are multi-platform.

There is at least one open source IDE: MonoDevelop, licensed under the GPLv2.

http://monodevelop.com/ - Supports C, C++, C#, Asp.net.. rather nicely I might add.

If you think Gimp is even close to the same as Photoshop, you are smoking crack

You fail reading comprehension.

While these applications are (to be honest) still far behind their commercial counterparts...

Blender vs the other guys? I dont know, I tried blender for about 30 seconds before giving up and playing around with the student editions of the big-boys stuff

30 seconds? You honestly believe you can learn a 3D modelling program in 30 seconds? If you gave up that quickly you didn't even try. A computer illiterate friend of mine who is an artist managed to learn it. It tooks a while to get used to for him but the difference between $2000+ and free is significant enough motivator to learn Blender.

Apache, Lighttpd and my current favorite nginx are awesome, but they dont have the close integration with their development tools and operating system that IIS does.

Considering Apache has a significant lead in marketshare over IIS I don't think lack of integration with development tools is an issue for anyone actually implmenting a web server and really why should it be?

there is no open source equivalant of Visual Studio

Yes there is.

There is no common way to install and remove software

Installing software on a mobile phone is actually pretty similar to installing software through a package manager and people don't seem to have any issues when it comes to that.

There is no stable base to write drivers (thus no hardware support)

Kernel developers write drivers and even offer to write drivers for any company that delivers specs. Linux supports a ton more hardware then Windows and Intel has developers working on kernel code for their devices. Stating that Linux has "no hardware support" is the overstatement of the century.

There are too many distros with too many proprietary ways of doing things. Too many proprietary repositories, too many proprietary package systems, to many proprietary filesystem layouts.

None of the things you mentioned are proprietary. It's impossible to create a proprietary GPL application.

Gimp is *not* Photoshop. Sorry. I know I mentioned this, but I'll repeat it again. You insult people who actually use Photoshop by making this claim

He didn't make that claim. You just made that up.

I think be intensive tasks, they just mean things you cant do in linux. eg: Use linux for web browsing, checking email etc .. use windows for gaming, Powerpoint, MS office. basically what you need windows for. I use Windows for my intensive programming, because monodevelop doesnt support Code completion for VB, and Squirrel-sql doesnt have the drag and drop for views with big joins.

Well I had a large project (server) under mono few months ago and Mono + monodevelop did the trick. But of course if you want "linux programming" you would be slightly disappointed :-), it looks so much like windows ;-).

The problem I had were the weak winform port for the rest...And few problems while marshalling across platefom...For the rest well it works.

Alternatively you can use Boo http://boo.codehaus.org/ , which has a MonoDevelop addin : http://monodevelop.com/Download

Boo is an object oriented statically-typed programming language for .NET/Mono with a Python inspired syntax and a special focus on language and compiler extensibility.

It actually has the feel of Python but has also all the features .NET can offer (contrary to IronPython)... and performance [Boo is on par with C# since it is statically-typed by default... you can use dynamic-typing where you really need it])

I'm a Windows developer who's gradually moving to Linux and I use MD more and more as time passes,I believe it's an important strategic tool for helping programmers switch to Linux. It needs lots of work, though.
I'd mentor someone myself for some of these tasks, if I were related to the project as anything more than "user" :(

Monodevelop is also nice if you need C# development on a linux platform.

I hear ya! My distro of choice is Novell openSUSE 10.2, which is very easy to set up and use, though I had to remove zmd to get efficient updates with opensuse-updater (the upcoming 10.3 doesn't install zmd by default). IMHO, Novell openSUSE 10.2 is an order of magnitude easier to set up and use than Ubuntu, though the /. community in general has taken an anti-Novell stance due to its patent cross licensing agreement with Microsoft (which is funny, considering how /. loves Apple despite Apple's numerous patent and technology cross licensing agreements with Microsoft, but I digress).

I've been able to "convert" two people at work from Windows XP to openSUSE 10.2 based on its merits and ease of use. Ubuntu will hopefully get to a similar position from a technical perspective, but IMHO at this time, Novell openSUSE 10.2 is already there, and Novell has committed themselves to making SUSE Linux a world-class desktop operating system.

From your post, here is what openSUSE 10.2 and likely other distros can offer:

- Browser: Firefox, Konqueror, Mozilla Seamonkey, Opera, and IEs4Linux (I use IEs4Linux to access Outlook Web Access's calendar at work, since I use Thunderbird for my email. I'm looking forward to an Exchange plug-in for Mozilla Lighning)

- Email: Thunderbird (yay! I'm also writing a Salesforce.com extension for it called Thunderforce), Evolution (I actually despise it, though I also don't like Outlook's interface. To each, their own.. Don't bother with the Exchange connector; it's slow and crashes often), KMail, and others

- Quicken 2008 might be tricky. Quicken 2007 appears to work to an extent, but it might have issues, which is probably not good for an accounting package

- GnuCash is a possible replacement for Quicken, though it's more like QuickBooks than Quicken. For a personal finance look and feel, KMyMoney might be the better way to go, though some time might need to be invested in the conversion process. Converting from Quicken Mac 2004 to KMyMoney was not seamless for me, but I haven't gone back and fixed the errors in the import configuration that I used and tried again. If you do the GnuCash approach, then you can use my GnuCashToQIF program to export back to Quicken in case if you want to go back to it or if you need to export your data to an accountant, either as QIF or IIF. I have an old Mac at home that I'm moving away from, though I'm still using Quicken and iTunes on it

- Novell's version of OpenOffice includes extensive support for Excel macros, so it's worth trying out. It might address all of your Excel needs. As a nice bonus, OpenOffice uses a single-document interface (SDI) instead of a multiple-document interface (MDI), permitting you to have two or more separate top-level spreadsheet windows side-by-side or on different monitors. Excel is MDI, though it does create a top-level start menu button for each open document, essentially faking SDI, but it's really MDI. You could enlarge Excel to span multiple monitors and have your MDI windows not maximized, but that breaks down if you have one monitor portrait and the other one landscape. If you really, really need Excel, then it appears to be well supported by CrossOver Office

- Visual Studio 2005 is a tough one because MonoDevelop might not include all the features that you may be accustomed to. It does implement a lot, but it's probably not a drop-in replacement yet.

I also like IDE's, with context sensitive help, and class completion and all the other things they do.

Honestly not trying to flame you here, but have you tried Eclipse? Am pretty sure it does what you need: for Java anyway, it certainly has basic support (syntax highlighting etc.) for other languages like C/C++ and PHP too. If you're into .NET there's Monodevelop, which is an IDE for that.

C# is a nice language to begin with. Its very similar to Java, it is widely used and supported, it is easy to get started with and you even get free developer tools.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/
http://www.monodevelop.com/

Visual C# 2005 Express Edition for Windows development, Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition for the web and MonoDevelop for Linux desktop apps.

Good luck, have fun and think in layers.

Also, take a look here for some nice Windows installers that'll provide you with Mono, GTK# and some Visual Studio add-ins.

Of course, for development on Linux, MonoDevelop is improving all the time.

Why virtualize .net development?
Just run monodevelop and do it natively on OS X

I find myself bored with every project I start on my own.

Are there any cross platform (linux, mac, windows) GUI RAD tools ala Builder, yet?

Otherwise if you choose c#, the ony decent ide is visual studio which will cost you a fortune.

We've used SharpDevelop http://sharpdevelop.com/ at our school for the past couple of years in our C# classes, and have found it to work out quite well. Having a program that can develop .Net on Win 98 computers is an added benefit for those of our students with, shall we say, Legacy equipment?

I haven't had a chance to do any real work with Mono http://www.monodevelop.com/Main_Page, but I hear from some students that it works well.

We've found that C# from a visual perspective works as a good transition language in our Pre-AP classes, and gets the students well acclimated for our AP class in Java.

Keep in mind this isn't a small program. Our school has between six and eight classes in Computer Science (both Pre-AP, AP Year 1, and AP Year 2) annually.

http://www.monodevelop.com/Main_Page

It it too bad that Mono's chief IDE, Monodevelop (http://www.monodevelop.com/), has hardly been updated in a long time, let alone support any of the nice code completion and autodocumentation that MS VStudio supports.

Furthermore along these lines, it is just too bad that KDevelop does not support extensive code completion for other self-documenting languages like Python.

Regarding JScript .Net, you're pretty damned right it isn't well documented, I spent my first month trying to learn .Net, and wanted to use JavaScript (my fav. language) ... spent a larger part of the time converting VB.Net and C# stuff, much of which didn't seem to work right (anything using dll/system/unmanaged calls, never did figure that out).. finally I broke down and learned C#, was much more neat as far as code goes, the VB-Like tie-in for declared objects kinda irked me.

'VB
Public MyObject As Object

//JS
public myObject as Object; //iirc

//C#
public Object myObject;

I just like the C# syntax a bit better.. just a personal view though. I like JavaScript in and of itself, I think the way it handles say regular expressions should be added into C#, it imho is about the biggest point that JS has over C#, since the syntax outside of declarations is about the same.

As for .Net development, with the SDK installed, can always use SharpDevelop as a free, opensource ide for .Net ... MonoDevelop is based on an earlier fork of #dev.

Beyond all this, javascript can be used in conjunction with XUL as another RAD environment, iirc the TheOpenCD uses it for it's menu/installer front end..

Sharp develop was the first and only IDE i use for .net programming. True, i am a college student, not known for having much money. And, add to the fact, i am a fairly new programmer (about 2.5 years now (some c++ , java, c#)). But, yeah...good for making windows applications fast and easy. Also there is a sharp develop linux port (not official) at Monodevlop.com http://www.monodevelop.com/ [monodevelop.com]. This port has started quite recently and uses GTK#. Screenshot to a sticky note app i made. http://www.geocities.com/themanwiththechair/sticky noteapp50.JPG 50% transparency [geocities.com/themanwiththechair] http://www.geocities.com/themanwiththechair/sticky noteapp100.JPG 100% transparency [geocities.com/themanwiththechair] ---- first post ever on /.

It's interesting to note that Novell is porting SharpDevelop to Mono.
See http://www.monodevelop.com/

According to this screenshot, the MonoDevelop IDE (in it's early stages) appears to run on Mac OS X.

According to this screenshot, the MonoDevelop IDE (in it's early stages) appears to run on Mac OS X.

Now the virtual machine and its tools etc still come from one provider...

Now the Virtual Machine and its tools etc still come from one provider?

And also, don't forget about this one...

MonoDevelop is based on the code for SharpDevelop. It was started after SharpDevelop so it is not as far along (the GUI builder is not done yet). However, it is very nice and moving along fast. Check it out.

I will continue to do so until someone makes an IDE on Linux that compares to Visual Studio (and no, Eclipse is not that IDE, especially for non-Java projects). Who knows, maybe I'll even develop it, if I can find the time that is :)

Like MonoDevelop? It is based off SharpDevelop.

Do they have one I'm not aware of?

Class Management

Built-in Help

Code Completion

Project Support

Integrated Debugger

and others It doesn't yet have a GUI builder, though you can use Glade for that which works OK for now.

you visit the Eclipse and NetBeans sites.

I know we are all about open source here, but honestly.. this has very little to do with Microsoft launching Visual Studio Express. Maybe you should mention how you can code C# in Eclipse. And also mention sharpdevelop or monodevelop. NetBeans, isn't really useful for .Net development as far I know...

Read this

Mono is free and open source. So is DotGNU. Rotor is made by MS themselves, free and "shared source". And the Microsoft Official .Net SDK is free as in beer as well, and free to distribute with any programs you make with it.

With all these free implementations, and Lots of free Open Source IDEs out there for it, implying that C# development costs money is pretty much the dumbest argument you can make against it.

SharpDevelop itself doesn't (it's a winforms app, and mono's winforms implementation is still... somewhat incomplete, to sat the least...), but this does.

One other note: This is actaully a port of the GPLed SharpDevelop which works with MS .Net. So for .Net use SharpDevelop and for Mono use MonoDevelop

There is MonoDevelop, while it is still in early development, it is coming along very well.

Mono is supposed to support ASP.NET, so theoretically, you should be able to port your app. In practice, I don't know how far along this is, or how difficult it is to "port" it.

Monodevelop is a Mono version of Sharpdevelop, an IDE similar to VS (yay, intellisense!). It is still very early in development, so I doubt you would want to use it on production software.

Right now, I'd say that you should hold off on Mono because it's still very young. Remember it, and keep an eye on it, because I think this project is going to "turn the corner" real soon.

You might also want to check out MonoDevelop v0.3 which was released to take advantage of new features in Mono Beta1.
While it's not quite up to the task of stable work yet, it will become a great IDE for .NET development in Linux and rival VS.NET in Windows.

Here are some substantial pieces of software that can currently run on top of the Mono VM:

• The Mono C# Compiler (MCS) itself is self-hosting on Mono. This consists of "roughly 1.7 million lines of C# code."
• OpenLink Virtuoso is hosted on Mono on the GNU/Linux platform.
• MonoDevelop, though in its early stages, is already proving really quite useful as a full fledged IDE.
• XSP is already capable of running a number of complex sites, web services and all! Just have a look at the monodoc project.

... and if you still believe Mono to be "vaporware," perhaps you can explain why Novell would ever consider sponsering a project so obviously doomed to fail?

Let us not also forget that Mono is still in its infancy, whereas Qt has had the opportunity to mature over many years of constant development and deployment.

Don't get me wrong, I am thoroughly impressed with the TrollTech offering in Qt, it is just that I have a hard time buying into the whole "vaporware" pitch with regards to Mono...

until gnome comes up with an integrated all-in-one development IDE ala' kdevelop, I'm not using it.

You haven't looked hard.

What about Anjuta, or MonoDevelop, combined with Glade?

Well, that, and because gnome is slow as ass compared to kde.

Unqualified, unsubstantiated, stupid as ass FUD.

You can't develop software for Linux with .NET?