Mono Project Releases Version 1.0

theblackdeer writes "Just poking around the go-mono.com Mono website; it's now the multi-colored mono-project.com. Even better, it updated before my eyes to include the 1.0 release. Screenshots are (slightly) updated, too. Mono 1.0 includes the Mono Develop IDE (based on SharpDevelop, I believe). Download now and start your GTK# engines!" Alliante adds "You can download the Release Notes and the Packages on their website."

Comments

Licensing concerns abated

[SIGALRM]

From the FAQ:

The Mono project has also sparked a lot of interest in developing C#-based components, libraries and frameworks

Yes it has. In our company's roadmap, we considered C# and Mono, but the controversial elements of their licensing (ASP.NET, ADO.NET, and Windows Forms subsets) gave us pause until we researched it further. Most of it is covered under the ECMA/ISO and the other technologies developed on top of it.

Looks like the Mono strategy is to work around the patent issues by using a different technique that retains the API but changes the mechanism.

beware...

[Anonymous Coward]

mono makes your throat sore. you get it from kissing girls. actually i guess that's not going to be a concern around here.

forgive the interruption.

Re:beware...

[saforrest]

...following in Miguel's inexplicable primate fetish.

I don't know about you, but every animal I find attractive in that way is indeed a primate.

How important is this for Linux?

[Pengo]

A open source RAD evironment sounds like it could have a huge impact on the number of apps that could be rolled out.

Not so much for the enterprise market, but also for the 'shareware' class applications. Most of my Windows specific applications are programs that are from very small development houses or shareware products. (I love to support a small shareware author!) . I use open source when prudent, but I also love to use a nice simple tool that even if it costs $15-$20 bucks to a pay-pal account, is money well spent in my opinion. Maybe Linux will start to attract this development base with Mono.

Another question, I have a pro version of C# I picked up at staples last year. Anyone know how realistic is it for me to build an application in Windows using my copy of C# and compile it and run it on mono?

Re:How important is this for Linux?

[chetohevia]

As long as you don't use P/Invoke or too many of the Windows.Forms items, it should do fine. That's part of the whole point.

The other thing you can do is run Gtk# on Windows for your xplatform GUI. :)

Re:How important is this for Linux?

[Tobias Luetke]

As long as you either use GTK# ( download ), wxNet or console mode you won't even have to recompile it under mono on linux/MacOs/whatever. You will be able to just run it.

Re:How important is this for Linux?

[thelexx]

Dear God NO, the last thing I want is the Linux software landscape to degenerate into a million shitty little utilities that all want $20-40 from me for something I probably only need to use once.

Re:How important is this for Linux?

[arvindn]

I cheer your voice of sanity in crowd of ideology and narrowmindedness.

When the windows desktop market was the size of the current linux desktop market (not in terms of percentage, of course, but numbers) there was a huge market for shareware. Why doesn't that market exist for linux today?

One reason could be the technology, which you've addressed, but IMHO the main reason is the economics. A while back, in a newsforge article I analyzed the situation and suggested how to create such a market. I was quite taken aback by the feedback, which consisted mainly of semi-coherent rants saying "shareware is teh evil!!!" and "kill anyone who dares to suggest proprietary software for linux!!" and so on, despite the fact that what I proposed would have the side effect more open source software getting written.

The linux landscape is changing, its going mainstream, and there are a lot linux users who don't like that. I must humbly suggest to such people that you cannot do anything about it, and you should therefore either accept the reality or start moving to another system where you can feel more "l33t".

Re:How important is this for Linux?

[ckaminski]

I recommend these people try the HURD. I hear they need a bunch of wannabee uber-geeks to test their kernel...

Plus, you can bitch and moan all you want about it being the One True Gnu, and be right for a change.

Re:How important is this for Linux?

[Dr. Evil]

That's politics, not economics.... and Shareware's only bite is in closed-source non-free software.

The shareware model has generally proven ineffective. It has the maintinence problems of closed source along with stunting growth of other software by leveraging the effect of "market dumping".

I'd like to see more creative models, like the one where the author sets a "freedom" price on the software and people contribute to having the source code released under an open license. I think people would feel better contributing cash to a project if they knew it wasn't going into a vacuous pool.

Re:How important is this for Linux?

[EvanED]

Now I don't usually run with the hype, I usually wait until new ideas and products prove themselves. As a result I'm a late adopter of Java (by now I'd say it has proven itself) maybe I'll be a late adopter of Mono/.NET as well. For now I don't see the added value. Anyone clue me in?

I think it's mostly the matter of extra options and personal choice. For instance, coming from a C++ background there are several things that I feel are "missing" from Java (default arguments, enums, operator overloading, etc.) and thus I am partial to using C# that has most of what's missing. A good cross-platform .Net and Windows Forms implementation would be very nice. So it adds (or at least will add once they get Winforms mostly done) another option to the "so you want to make a cross platform program" toolbox, in with Java, Qt, wxWindows, etc. Options are always good.

(My intent is not to start a Java flame war here; this is just my opinion.)

Re:How important is this for Linux?

[Dalcius]

"The linux landscape is changing, its going mainstream, and there are a lot linux users who don't like that. I must humbly suggest to such people that you cannot do anything about it, and you should therefore either accept the reality or start moving to another system where you can feel more "l33t"."

You call others narrowminded but I don't think you yourself understand the reasons people are afraid of the side-effects of Linux growth. Maybe you're just hearing a vocal minority.

I personally cannot stand to use Windows these days, for many reasons... but one of the biggest is the environment. Under Linux searching for help, files or other content is particularly easy: the signal to noise ratio is quite good. Under Windows, it's "Sign up to download, we sell your email, now you can wait in a queue to get your file, but here are some ads to keep you busy". Pop-ups, spam, misdirection, just junk in general.

The bottom line for this reasoning is that Linux it's just easier to find what you want (or at least a definitive 'It doesn't exit') in a shorter time. When the community starts growing, we'll see lots of wannabe applications attempting to sell themselves to you, registration keys and website registrations, hassles downloading files or getting help, etc. This is a Bad Thing.

That all said, I'm in favor of Linux's growth and I think most people are. There aren't many true Linux users who do it just to be "leet" and I think its pretty silly to suggest that. Most Linux hobbiests do it because they are in control, in one way or another -- application choices, configurations, power, etc.

Slapping a dogma on someone and calling them an idiot isn't helping anyone. I think the Linux community is ready to expand and wants to expand, it's just afraid of how severe the consequences might be when the 'unwashed masses' start using this stuff.

Cheers

Re:How important is this for Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

People have to eat. As far as I can tell, food isn't free. Until food is free, I will charge a reasonable fee for the use of my software. If the software is terrible, I'll give it away - or, more likely, not even release it. I have hundreds of projects that never made it to a release-quality state and would never release them without serious effort on my part.

So, I cheer on anyone who encourages closed-source commercial development for Linux because food isn't free and people have to eat.

Now, before you rate this down, here's what I would recommend the Linux community seriously consider. There are a large contingent of commercial organizations who would port their Windows applications over to Linux in a heartbeat if there was a Windows-like registry for Linux with the sole purpose of accomodating commercial applications. This registry would have to be protected by the OS itself and require Linux users to generally agree to not touch it (read: crack it). I don't care how the registry is implemented, but organizations want the ability to enforce 30 day trials on systems. The lack of a centralized, secured repository of information really deters commercial interests from porting high-quality software from Windows to Linux. There's a lot of Linux software for Windows, but over 90% of it seriously lacks in an area called usability - Oh, I've heard of "great strides" being taken, but every once in a while (every 3-4 months) I'll randomly try a distro. - Fedora Core 2 being the latest since it looked pretty interesting, but the first screen I encountered after the unusable installation put the username and password entries on separate screens...this is what I mean by usability - ease-of-use, the command-line login is more usable than the new graphical login of Fedora. The result? I went back to Windows and I'll wait a few months and try another distro. or a ported application to see if usability has improved any. BTW, I'm one of those people who makes recommendations for software/hardware combinations. To win me over to Linux is going to take some serious effort in the area of usability - effort I have yet to see. (And I know my way around enough of Linux to be dangerous, so don't write me off as some idiot Windows user).

That said, I also want every company that ports to Linux to agree that if a product goes EOL (End Of Life), the source code to that product becomes Open Source under a compatible license. This, IMO, is fair and reasonable. See, I like to develop software first and once I've finished what I've worked on, then I receive input about it. However, until I am completely done working on the source code, I don't want anyone else to touch it, let alone see it. Just like an artist, I only want people to see the finished product, not some half-finished masterpiece. It is only fair to existing users of the software to see the source code if it is no longer being developed. As such, if I EOL a product in the product line, I'll either migrate existing users to another product or open the source code. One thing I won't do is leave them hanging without options.

Re:How important is this for Linux?

[DaHat]

First up... I am the poster of #9571933 above, secondly, you have completely misunderstood my point... frankly I'm not surprised.

At no time did I say or even hint at 'support' meaning 'fix'.

Support for a Microsoft product for instance is often easy to get and exists at multiple levels. If you truly need Windows 2003 Server support at 3 am over the phone, you can get it... you just may be paying an arm and a leg for it. However if you are getting an error message which makes little sense to you, a quick search of the Knowledge Base can often resolve it.

Because of some problems I was having today with Linux and kDevelop, I decided to start a blog about my anger. If you read the initial post you'll see a bit about what my gripe is, but I'll say it again here.

In my experience... (note that I say 'my experience', lets not flame me for being too dumb to have a good experience or anything else along those lines), Linux an open source software have an awful support record.

Lately I've had a number of difficult Linux related questions which I could not find answers for. No matter how many Linux 'experts' I'd ask or message board posts or Google searches I'd do... answers were never forthcoming.

Traditionally when you pay for a product, the author of it is more dedicated to it and spends a fair amount of time on it... unlike many open source projects that begin as a hobby or other non professional project.

I have no doubt that there is plenty of good (F)OSS, but in my experience (yes, that term again), a lot of it fails when it comes to documentation and support if the problem does not fall into very narrow bounds.

Yes, there are plenty of "How-To" Linux books in the world, but no matter how many they are, they and all of the other "How-To's" and related documentation and tutorials in the world are worthless to me if they cannot solve my problem.

The moral of my story is "Money = Incentive to (Succeed|Expand)", coupled with "Incentive => Higher Quality", "Higher Quality => Money"

That is to say, paying for a product motivates the author to continue their good work and support the product and make it the best they can. In turn a higher quality has a better chance of having people be willing to pay for it.

In my experience (and only my experience), (F)OSS tends to lack heavily in terms of usability compared to commercial products. With an income related to a product, one can often get better input (often from skilled consultants) on layout and design to ensure the application is as easy to use as possible... thus increasing the potential for further profit!

I never thought I'd be chanting this, But...

[cmdrwhitewolf]

Go Mono, Go! I hope you infect everybody!

(at least I'm not back in college anymore, where they would've probably hauled me away in straight jacket for chanting that...)

.NET terrarium..

[joeldg]

Wonder if that can be run in mono..
installing to find out.

I have been playing in GTK getting sprites and such working, but would like to use this for more portability.. .NET terriarium is damn cool
http://www.windowsforms.net/default.aspx?tab Index= 6&tabId=42
Check it

ah, the joys of playing catch-up

[jbellis]

ironic that this comes just days after MS announces that whidbey and the next-generation .NET framework hit beta 1.

I'm cheering for the Mono guys but I don't see how they can avoid being also-rans in the compatibility race.

Re:ah, the joys of playing catch-up

[miguel]

Like Alan Cox said: "Free software is always late", followed by something like `The moment you write the first line of code you are already late: you need the feature, thats why you wrote that line'.

Everyone of your favorite projects was late or playing catch up: Samba, OpenOffice, Gnome, Linux, glibc, gcc, gdb, CUPS.

Miguel.

Re:ah, the joys of playing catch-up

[Sunspire]

First, Mono already supports a lot of the stuff coming in Whidbey (generics for example).

Second, even if Microsoft killed their .NET effort tomorrow it wouldn't change the fact that we now have a kick-ass development platform for Linux. Everybody needs to take a look at the two software stacks of Mono.

Wether Mono has feature parity with MS .NET is not the most important thing, neither is supporting Windows.Forms. Mono is good enough to stand on its own, as the next generation Linux development platform. Interoperability with Windows is just sugar on the top. Where do you see the Linux desktop being five years from now? I truly hope we're not still at the time writing our applications in C, as we do for the GNOME desktop now. Unless Sun steps up to the plate to release their JVM under a open soruce license, Mono is pretty much our only hope to modernize our development environment in any reasonable timeframe.

Of course, some will say we've already got Python, or Ruby or whatever. But I say I want to program Python in Mono.

Re:ah, the joys of playing catch-up

[goodviking]

I used to agree with you, then I read "How Microsoft Lost the API War". The thing that really struck me was that fundamentals components of .NET will be abandonned with Avalon . This is why I now think that open source .net is a masterstroke. MS is basically asking/forcing their developer base to adopt a now open sourced, platform neutral enviornment. In a few years, they're going to break the whole model and say that to play, you have to retrain and recode major portions of your work. At that point, it becomes more cost effective to stick with mature solutions that work, not play catchup to the latest and greatest. "Look, Shinny Things" is not a better business strategy than compatibility and reuse.

Why .NET and not Java?

[Sanity]

This may seem like flamebait, but they throw the first stone right there on From the Mono website:

...However, the Java runtime systems commonly available on Linux lack the performance that customers demand, and Java applications do not conform to the Linux GUI look and feel.

If these are the best justification for .NET over Java, then they are pretty weak.

As has been pointed out ad tedium in various Java-related discussions on /. - Java's early reputation for poor performance may have been justified in the 1.0 and 1.1 days, but modern Java VMs employ sophisticated JIT compilers which gives it comparable performance to natively compiled languages like C++, and easily matches .NET's CLR performance. Java's bytecode and .NET's bytecode are not that different, the main differences are in the APIs.

Which brings us on to the second justification for .NET over Java, native GUIs, which is even weaker. Java-Gnome does the same thing as Mono's GTK bindings, offering exactly the same GUI abilities, and SWT offers a truely cross-platform GUI API with a native look and feel on each platform it runs on.

Re:Why .NET and not Java?

[Kaellenn]

Unfortunately, while I agree with you on all your well-made points, I don't think your'e gonna be able to convince people who have a long-held hatred of everything to do with Java.

Yes, it's unfortunate, but at the time the mono project started, those statements were true and were good justification. However, as time progressed and java stabilized as a great programming language, different reasons for pressing the mono issue came to the forefront.

Like it or not, this is an MS dominated industry, and they're going to be pressing .NET, not Java. Java's a great tool and I'd love to see more java apps written, but we're never going to keep up with MS if we can't do the .NET thing too.

In the end, it's probably good to have both; more cross-platform implementations are better. :)

Re:Why .NET and not Java?

[miguel]

First, keep in mind that Mono also ships with a Java VM, so your Java code will work on Mono ;)

There are other reasons, I do not claim these are all of the possibilities, but here are some more:

• Multi-language support by design, which lets some complicated languages like C, C++ and Fortran
  to be supported without hacks.
  
• ValueTypes (structs) are not supported in Java, which is a source of major pressure on the GC, an
  issue solved completely by the availability of it
  on .NET
  
• Today: Generics are a VM feature, not only a language feature: which means that your list of
  ints will be a list of ints, and not syntactic sugar for a list of objects of Integer. Importan
  for performance.
  
• Binding APIs for C# and .NET is trivial, which is why there is a whole industry of bindings
  for the framework: its trivial to call back into the old code base, without using JNI of any kind.
  
• Some people care about the fact that it has been standardized by ECMA.
  
• .NET improves upon the lessons learned from Java and were able to make changes that Sun could not
  (yes, that means that someone else can build something new now, and fix the .NET mistakes ;-)
  
• Some of us prefer C# the language to Java the language.
  

But feel free to use Java for doing Gnome applications, I have nothing against it, we are
only an equal opportunity platform provider. Let the big boys fight it over.

Miguel

Re:Why .NET and not Java?

[Sunspire]

Java, as it is now, is a complete non-contender in the area Mono is focusing on, which is Linux desktop apps. First, there's no complete open source Java implementation, no distribution ships Sun's JVM. Sure, you can download the JVM for free, but how can you expect us to build a desktop around the thing in that case?

If these are the best justification for .NET over Java, then they are pretty weak.

There's a lot of reasons to go with .NET over Java, and vice versa. This argument will likely never die. Ultimately the difference isn't that big. That said, I personally prefer the direction .NET/Mono is taking and I think Sun is foolish to be resting on its laurels. At this rate Mono will become a major force in the Linux landscape and Sun is doing nothing, five years from now they'll still be wondering what the hell happened.

Which brings us on to the second justification
for .NET over Java, native GUIs, which is even weaker. Java-Gnome

Java-GNOME is completely dead. Java on the desktop, except for Eclipse and SWT (no thanks to Sun) is completely dead. GTK#/Mono has a lot of momentum and Ximian/Novell throwing their weight behind it which is not to be underestimated. Guess which is more likely to have support two years from now, Java-GNOME or GTK#?

Re:Why .NET and not Java?

[danheskett]

First, Java as a client tool is not popular for Windows development. .NET of course will be. And it is rapidly becoming that way. If a properly written CLR and Class Library was constructed for non-Windows, any app written to use the provided libraries would run immediately on Linux/etc. This a big thing. If any old user can run any old Windows app natively on Linux, that's good (TM).

Second, .NET isn't as language specific as Java. Though the .NET CLR is slightly or moderatly biased towards some languages it is vastly more friendly to new compilers. The whole point of the .NET CLR is to encourage new languages to compile to it. This means that a single CLR can support any number of new languages. It means that a Ruby# program compiled to CLR on Windows will run under .NET. This is a "good thing" that Sun can't really with Java.

Re:Why .NET and not Java?

[Timesprout]

Ive been a big critic of Eclipse in the past but 3.0 is huge improvement over their previous efforts and its not actually bad. IDEA IntelliJ is probably the best IDE out there but will cost you a few bucks. NetBeans is passable or you can download JBuilder Foundation which is quite limited, the decent versions will set you back a fair whack. I'm not sure if Oracle JDeveloper is free, it's a JBuilder spin off and from what I hear not bad. Eclipse is the pick of the freebies but I prefer to pay for the quality of IntelliJ.

Re:Why .NET and not Java?

[LDoggg_]

You know Miguel, you've honestly ticked me off in the past with your anti java sentiment.
That said, this is the first time I've seen a post of yours that has some merit.

I've been coding in Java for more than 6 years now, and I guess I've just gotten really comfortable with the language. I've also been using linux for several years now. The last few years has seen good JVMs & IDEs available for linux, so I've kept developing with it.

Recently I've become involved in setting up K12LTSP networks. I started a project that's windows companion CD of software the students will be using at school on linux.
I wrote the graphical installer in Java and it took me no time at all. Its XML based and exactly what I wanted.
One problem, I have to bundle a vm to make it autorun.

Your mono stuff looks like it can do this and totally open source. I'll have to get use to some new libraries and what not, but if this works out, I'd be really psyched about your project.

Anyway, keep up the good work, and congrats on 1.0 !

Re:Why .NET and not Java?

[mrtrumbe]

Java-GNOME is completely dead. Java on the desktop, except for Eclipse and SWT (no thanks to Sun) is completely dead. GTK#/Mono has a lot of momentum and Ximian/Novell throwing their weight behind it which is not to be underestimated. Guess which is more likely to have support two years from now, Java-GNOME or GTK#?

Smells like trolls 'round these parts.

Here are sourceforge's statistics on GTK#.

Here are sourceforge's statistics on Java-Gnome.

What criteria are you using to proclaim Java-Gnome dead? From the statistics on sourceforge, it seems that there is interest in the project and far more reports of bugs than for GTK#.

I agree that Sun hasn't been as cooperative as I'd like to see in terms of Java's relationship with the open source community. However, I think you are making some baseless assertions about the current and future relevence of projects supporting Java in the open source arena.

Also, I think it is laughable that the mono team claims "Java applications do not conform to the Linux GUI look and feel." Which look and feel is that, exactly? KDE? Gnome? FVWM? The majority of Linux apps that I use do not conform to any single look and feel. OpenOffice? Looks like Windows 95. Mozilla/Firefox (by default)? Completely different (though skinable). Sure, Mono, with GTK# looks like a Gnome app, but that really isn't going to help a KDE or FVWM user, is it?

Much of the anti-Java sentiment around slashdot seems to originate from rabid pro-open source ideology. I wish people would evaluate these technologies on their capabilities and applicability rather than whether the companies supporting them conform to their particular ideology.

Taft

Re:Why .NET and not Java?

[GlowStars]

...no distribution ships Sun's JVM...

WRONG! SuSE does.

Re:Why .NET and not Java?

[iwadasn]

That still seems a little weak. Most of the things you are trying to solve are either vacuous, or simply problems that should be solved at the VM layer without causing the users any additional pain.

Multi-Language: Please, they're all the same language designed to look like other languages. Java has multi language support to (Jython). This is not a fundamental reason.

Value Types: Use escape analysis and a better GC. This is a hack so programmers can give hints to a stupid GC.

Generics: Where are the C# generics? The version we're using at work doesn't have them. Java Generics will arrive first, but be worse off in the beginnnig. C# will arrive later, and initially have a better implementation. Java should fix their implementation in a future revision of the VM and bytecode standard.

Bindings: Spin the wheel and see which function gets called today. Not much needs to be said here, but there's something to be said for the precision of the java bindings as opposed to the pattern matching of the C# bindings.

ECMA: And patented by Microsoft. Fact it, Microsoft will embrace and extend it, or threaten lawsuit to keep their monopoly. The ECMA won't do jack about that.

C# language: The only even marginally valid claim. However, the lack of checked exceptions and sub-standard stack traces are pretty nasty. I don't think C# is a step up in any meaningful way, unless of course you like writing crappy code and just can't bear to know which exceptions you should be worried about. If that's the case, VB6 will always be waiting.

I'm not saying that the C# people are stupid, or anything like that. But this whole endeavor seems to demonstrate a monumental lack of foresight. Why fragment the world even further rather than uniting behind a standard the Microsoft doesn't own?

Re:Why .NET and not Java?

[mingot]

Structs? Have you heard of classes? .NET included structs which was nice but its only there for compatibility with older languages like C. You shouldnt use them for straight .NET development. Its up there with continueing to use pointers. If you have to have those sort of things why even use .NET?

Huh? Structs are there to give you stack based storage outside of the GC so that if you are creating and destroying thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of variables the GC doesn't have to constantly collect. Even though gen zero collections are fast it's still an issue.

Generics exist in Java. They existed as open source projects and are now part of the language (see version 1.5). Ive heard this argument in the past: .NET has this feature and Java doesnt. Apparently no one gave thought to the idea that Sun would just put out a new version with that feature included also.

You obviously don't understand the distinction he was making. Let me try harder for you. In Java generics generate the same old code as always and are really just a fancy way of letting you add type safety at compile time. In .NET they are actually part of the backend. The VM. In Java, in the VM they're all just boxed objects. And lots of typecasts. Shitty. Google around for better explainations.

Re:Why .NET and not Java?

[Sunspire]

Multi-Language: Please, they're all the same language designed to look like other languages. Java has multi language support to (Jython). This is not a fundamental reason.

The big difference is that .NET/Mono is actively moving towards a general purpose VM whereas the JVM is not. Sun will officially support other languages when... well never. Today, you've got languages like Python/Ruby/Haskell being targeting at the .NET CLR, but look at the big picture. What about CLR version 2, 3, 4... ? The potential is huge. Parrot is the only thing even remotely like it the open source world, and that's only for dynamic scripting languages at the moment. Don't count out a Parrot to Mono CLR compiler yet either! The multilanguage feature has the potential to unify all the minor languages to a single CLR. Right now we're writing GTK bindings for C, C++, Python, Ruby, Perl, etc. With GTK# (despite the name, it's more like GTK-Mono IMO) every language targeting the CLR gets up to date bindings!

Where are the C# generics?

In Mono.

Re:Why .NET and not Java?

[Armchair Dissident]

I now have to use C# at work as our company has decided that this is what Microsoft's future is invested in. I've had a love-hate relationship with it, and my opinion of .NET is possibly clouded by my use of C#, rather than a criticism of .NET, but anyway:

• Multi-language support by design is a hack. It's not real. C++, for example is not C++ as I, as a C/C++ hack, know it. It's a thing that is something like, but not quite C++.
• structs as ValueTypes are a pain in the arse. They have the same syntactic semantics as classes but have no similarities. Because of this
  flibble foo = new flibble();
  flibble bar = new flibble();
  
  foo==bar"
  means two completely different things depending upon whether flibble is a struct or a class. Which has given me endless problems with DateTime.
• Generics are not yet a standard feature of of .NET CLR. This is the reason given by Microsoft for not including generics as part of C#.
• EMCA standardisation is a joke if the libraries can be butchered. The language is the least of the problems when portability is concerned. The precise way in which the libraries work and interoperate is the big problem.
• .NET - as far as I can see - was simply a way of touting a "write once, run anywhere" platform, without actually proving the case. C# takes some things out of Java, and some out of C++, but never asks the question "why are these here". Operator overloads without templates, and without a good distinction between references are pointers spring to mind. (what does 'foo == bar' do?)
• Some prefer C#, but I can't see why...

Sorry Miguel. Mono is a worthy project, and I have it running on OS/X - it's impressive from that point. But as .NET stands, and especially C#, Microsoft got it hideously wrong.

Re:Why .NET and not Java?

[mingot]

Give an example of where this is needed.

Um, anywhere that a method gets called continuously that has a large number small local variables (int, double, etc) that are used in calculations. My choices are to either pass in a re-usable object (which sucks when you have a method with 10+ local doubles) or to make the thing class level (if the method happens to be in the calling class) or to stash it in some static class that both of my classes now need to know how to interact with. Pretty much every option sucks, save defining the thing where you need it. Hell, if I was programming Java performance would have to suffer and I would not think twice about it (unless I *had* to) simply to avoid the maintenance headeaches of the alternatives.

Also note that structs can be created, manipulated, and destroyed with Java with JNI and CNI.

The entire point of using structs in .NET is performance and your solution is to wrap them with JNI which has its own overhead? Maybe you're still stuck on the idea that the only reason they exist is to gived pinned memory which can be used to interoperate with older C API calls. False. If that were the case NONE of the native types would be value. The value type would be something esoteric that was only dragged out when you needed to P/Invoke.

Java 1.5 has auto unboxing. Same thing .NET has. This was added on top of JSR-14. You are probably looking at the original generics design for Java 1.5 on googled pages. Its been updated.

It's quite possible that my general ignorance about most things Java is showing. I'll dig into this and see how it compares to the (admitadly date) materials I have read.

Re:Why .NET and not Java?

[iwadasn]

Here's a good one everyone.... When does if(null == blah) { return true;} throw an exception? When the guy writing a class has decided to override == and not really considered nulls. Wow, isn't that grand. Now we can get a null pointer exception when we're trying to prevent a null pointer exception. So now there's no possible way to avoid throwing the exception, and the exceptions in C# are slow too. THANKS MICROSOFT!!!!! Operator overloading should be strictly forbidden. Here's another question for all you operator overloaders.... Does your + operator commute with your - operator? Does you * or / operator distribute over + or -? If you don't know the answers to these questions, you should never overload operators.

Try MonoDevelop

[Anonymous Coward]

For those looking for an IDE, try out MonoDevelop 0.5. It doesn't have a gui builder, but has code-completion(intellisense), class browser, project management, etc... It's a port of Sharpdevelop.

Shifting ABI's

[IGnatius T Foobar]

I'm still a little skeptical about using a Microsoft-owned technology on Linux, but perhaps this is just what we need to get ISV's on board. I'm going to guess that the "Mono ABI" is going to be less of a moving target than the "Linux ABI" has been. That would be very ironic.

Debate all you want

[Stevyn]

While people can debate about this, I do think it's something important for linux. It says that no matter what one company can do to try to make their development platform closed and proprietary, the open source community can retort back with their open standards. Yeah, this is just an attempt at cloning yet another microsoft product by the open source community, but when the world uses microsoft and they're distributing this for free, it hardly is as bad as one software giant cloning say...word perfect. I haven't tried mono yet, but when the day arrives when I can run a windows app and linux app without jumping through wine I'll be a happy linux user.

I really think operating systems have become a comodity anyway. To me, linux, windows, and mac don't mean much but the software that runs on them. Sure, making different versions like mozilla does works now, but you can't expect companies like adobe to ever do the same. I think running things off the same compiled code is where software should be headed. This would make the argument of not being able to switch to linux because of lack of supported applications moot.

This is the first time I've ever thought of .NET as something positive.

Go Cross-Platform!

[krmt]

I've been looking for a good way to write a crossplatform GUI for an app I'm working on. Java is not a good choice for a variety of reasons, so Mono is looking pretty tempting right now. Since Mozilla-The-Platform hasn't taken off as well as it could, Mono may wind up being the best option for a totally Free Software approach to cross-platform work. On the other hand, wxWidgits is a great toolset as well, and I wouldn't be surprised if they get C# language bindings for the library.

Re:How can Miguel say that Mono is independent..

[miguel]

The same applies to GNU C, GNU C++, GNU Fortran, GNU Ada, GNU Pascal and POSIX.

If you want to call it something else `D#', be my guest, but I think that incremental changes to the
language have a better chance of having an impact in the world, if we work with the standards organizations
than just by forking things.

Dashboard

[Mr_Silver]

After viewing the screenshots I was really impressed with Dashboard (especially if it works).

Given that my main OS is Windows (sorry), is there anything like this for it?

Congrats, mono is impressive

[Ars-Fartsica]

The mono team has released an incredible amount of code in a relatively short timespan. The mono codebase goes beyond a compiler and runtime - graphical bindings, documentation, and a full IDE are all being rolled out as one more strong alternative in the linux development world. Added to which there are already "for real" apps out there you can use today that are not just toys - for example the Muine music player.

Too many people will get hung up over the Microsoft angle and notions that mono is out to wipe out all other development toolkits. This is nonsense. What the mono team has done is upended a Microsoft strategy - that Windows is differentiated because of the .Net platform. Now we have a level playing field on top of all of the other inherent advantages of open source.

Bravo and thanks mono team.

Re:Some please explain to me

[Tony]

I'm probably feeding a troll, but I'll assume you are sincere.

Mono was developed because Miguel thought Mono was kinda cool, and because he could. Beyond that, though, there are a few other important issues.

Most importantly, Mono is vital to the future of Linux and other open-source projects. This was a blatant attempt by Microsoft to reign in wandering developer mindshare. Also, it is part of their strategy to bring the application space back from the web, to the desktop-- Microsoft's desktop.

Also, although most geeks realize that Microsoft is not to be trusted, and that generally they produce shoddy (or downright dangerous) software, most of the rest of the world doesn't understand the danger. So, for a lot of manager-types (you know the ones, knuckles dragging the ground, sloped brow furrowed in concentration while parsing simple sentences, signs your paychecks with an 'X'), they see this as "Microsoft's next big direction." Many will choose to follow that direction, because they love Power Point.

And finally, there's the issue of choice. Java is Okay, but there are issues with it. C# has a different set of issues. Both suck. Both are great. Both cower before the awesome power of LISP. Different developers like different things in a language. Some languages suit our personalities better than others. Me, I'm a LISP and Perl kinda guy. The guy sitting next to me likes C and PHP.

There are potential pitfalls with C#, but at the moment that is all they are: potential. And in most cases, those problems are perceived, and not actual. Now .NET is deployable on any platform with a CLI, like Mono. Nobody pays Microsoft anything, though it doesn't put them at the disadvantage that Java would.

But ultimately our goal should be to produce damned good software, not just destroy Microsoft; we should concentrate on building up, not tearing down.

Free as in 'Free from vendor lockin'

[NigelJohnstone]

Look, mono have cloned an enviroment & language whose direction is steered by Microsoft.

This is a problem, Microsoft is not nice.

Microsoft can take it into a direction where MS holds patents & IP protection (if it doesn't already which is very unlikely). Mono will either have to follow and lock its user in, or go in a separate direction and abandon any pretensions at cloning MS .NET.

What I think they should do is embrace and extend the the .NET framework *NOW*, add features and support for things that the Windows .NET does not have. But also bring the extended version to Windows itself.

That way the MONO implementation of .NET becomes the real one, not the MS one.

Re:Free as in 'Free from vendor lockin'

[MenTaLguY]

What I think they should do is embrace and extend the the .NET framework *NOW*, add features and support for things that the Windows .NET does not have. But also bring the extended version to Windows itself.

That's precisely what they've been doing all along. Until recently, they've just been very quiet about it...

You'll notice lately that Miguel's been talking about "API stacks" -- i.e. Gtk# et al versus Microsoft's SWF et al., both built on the safe substrate of the ECMA standard. They've been working on that stuff all along, but until recently not talking about it separately.

See also this post.

I believe they're offering packages without any of the Microsoft-specific bits now (to make e.g. Debian happy). And yes, this stuff works on Windows.

I don't think Microsoft quite realizes what's hit them yet. Embrace and extend again, but this time it's Microsoft on the receiving end.

Re:Some please explain to me

[bradkittenbrink]

The greatest risk of the Mono project is Microsoft stepping in and filing suit against the project for using its API w/o a license. Doesn't anyone else see this? Why was Mono ever started to begin with? All you Mono developers are doing is putting $$$ into microsoft's pocket!!!

Actually, the majority of the API is covered by the public EMCA specifications. Microsoft specifically made it impossible (very very difficult) to sue someone for that when they made the standards public. See the mono and microsoft faq for details. The fact that mono is perfectly legal doesn't change the fact that they may be putting $$$ into microsoft's pocket though.

JOIN FORCES WITH PORTABLE.NET

[Space_Soldier]

While mono is better overall, Portable.NET has better WindowsForms support. It sucks to have 2 open source projects that at their core want the same thing. If the open source community wants to compete with the fast releases of the Microsoft .NET , they need to be more unified.

Mono:.NET == Apache:IIS == Firefox::IE

[Dwonis]

See the Mono Licensing and Patents FAQ:

Mono implements the ECMA/ISO covered parts, as well as being a project that aims to implement the higher level blocks like ASP.NET, ADO.NET and Windows.Forms.

The Mono project has gone beyond both of those components and has developed and integrated third party class libraries, the most important being: Debugging APIs, integration with the Gnome platform (Accessibility, Pango rendering, Gdk/Gtk, Glade, GnomeUI), Mozilla, OpenGL, extensive database support (Microsoft only supports a couple of providers out of the box, while Mono has support for 11 different providers), our POSIX integration libraries and finally the embedded API (used to add scripting to applications and host the CLI, or for example as an embedded runtime in Apache).

The nifty thing about this is that Mono has the potential to be bigger and better than the .NET Framework, and we don't actually *need* .NET to make good use of Mono.

The way I see it, Mono could end up gaining more market share than Microsoft's implementation, and as long as we don't tie ourselves to the Windows-specific APIs, there's not a whole lot Microsoft could do about it!

Runtime Distribution

[Nurgled]

This Mono 1.0 release seems to be developer-oriented. Will they (or someone else) be creating smaller runtime packages which only include the stuff necessary to run applications?

It would be nice if there were an easy install package for Win32, too. This might seem pointless on the surface, but Microsoft.NET won't install on all Windows systems due to deliberate barriers, plus Microsoft's distribution does not come with GTk# and so forth.

I'm installing the full release on my main system, but it'd be nice to have a smaller runtime package that I can put on my other boxen to run any apps I create. Perhaps in a few hundred years Debian will have a runtime package which can be depended on by mono apps without having to pull in the whole development environment. (mono-runtime vs. mono-devel, both depending on mono-common)

(I see a page about the Mono runtime but it's talking about the runtime portion of the project rather than a specific runtime distribution.)

Mono vs JVM

[Sunspire]

One huge benefit to Mono on the desktop is that it acts as, and for all intents and purposes is, just a normal language/platform for Linux. Exactly like C/Python etc. You install the RPM, or compile the source, or get the whole thing pulled down as a depdenency from yum/apt for some third party program you really wanted to run in the first place. It's there in the background as any other package on your system. When you run a Mono GTK# program from your GNOME menu or the shell, you can't really say just from looking at it that it's a Mono program and not standard C.

Java on the hand, goes out of its way to jump in your face at every opportunity. Java is completely unlike everything else on your system. Java spews its shit all around your system even when you install it from a package (what the hell entitles Java to a toplevel directory in /usr, it's just one of 12 languages and development kits I've got installed on my system). You're not going to get Java with your distribution. You can't pull down Java as a dependency for some other app. You don't get Java apps in RPM/whatever format in the first place. You've got to know what the heck a classpath is, etc.

Then you've got your Ant build systems, Jar packages, and tons of other stuff completely alien to Linux. The few Mono apps I've compiled have been the standard "./configure, make, make install". Long story short: Mono will will the desktop because end users don't have to know what Mono is in the first place.

Re:What the Mono guys don't get

[elflord]

is that using C# implies accepting being led by Microsoft

No. You're the one who doesn't get it.

Just exactly how is Mono+Linux any better than .NET+Windows?

Runs on Linux.

Does the Mono team have ANY plans to innovate beyond what Microsoft is doing

Yes. See GTK-sharp, Qt-sharp, Mono.Posix, Mono.Data, etc. (in fact, try reading the FAQ before posting) The Mono and portable.Net projects are both interested in supporting the Microsoft APIs, but support for Linux APIs is also important.

Longhorn is a ruse

[fijimf]

All the Microsoft developers are secretly rewriting MS Office in C#.NET.

As soon as the Mono guys finish the hard part of the Linux port, MS will abandon Windows, fork Linux and start selling MS Linux bundled w/ Mono (and of course, Firefox with the new IE theme), and MS Office for Linux.

It's just crazy enough to work.

Re:Any tutorials out there?

[Sunspire]

Check out the The Mono Handbook for tutorials and general getting started instructions. It's still a work in progress, so many sections are still quite empty. Another resource you should familiarize yourself with is the MSDN developer documentation for most of the core .NET API, it includes a lot of examples.

I also recommend you check out the standard GTK+ tutorial. A lot of it is still directly applicable to GTK# and it's more complete than most GTK# only tutorials. If you're already familiar with GTK+, Glade# for Rapid Development will help you get up to speed with Mono.

Open Source Gaming...

[Psymunn]

One of the problem with Shareware (or cripple ware) and open source is that it's generally just as easy to distribute the shareware version as the complete version, so it only takes one person to purchase a product and give it to everyone.
I think this impacts open source game production because, frankly, it's hard to find a way to give the source to the community and still ensure some kind of revenue stream.
What I figured is, why can't someone release a game, GPL all the source code, but claim that the artwork and level data are copyrighted and, please, feel free to give your buddies a copy, but don't use the art/leveldata in a commercial release
I think that, while not nesseccarily in keeping with the free software ideology, it is in keeping with the open source philosophy (and yes, bare with me, i know that free is not cost free and open is not simply saying 'check out my code')
By providing my source code to whomever wants it, I make it easier for the next guy not to have to reinvent the wheel. But the specific game data (leveldata, game sprites) are what makes this game unique (if only at the surface level) and are useless to a programer who wants to use my code to write his own game.
Such a license would allow one to release a Shareware version of the game (akin to Doom or Commander Keen, where you get an episode, not some software that expires over time and does half of what you want) which allows for commercial distribution, and a full version which the author can sell.
Of course, maybe that makes the author a capatalistpropriatarypigbastard, but i'd like to hear feedback on the idea...

Re:What about the patent issues?

[Teancum]

First of all, Microsoft has been directly helping the Mono project, in terms of technical assistance. While this doesn't solve the patent issue, it does show a certain culpability on the part of Microsoft, and it would be a big fly in the ointment if MS decided to file a lawsuit.

Also, Mono is much closer to a "clean-room" development model, based almost exclusively on the API libraries and reverse engineering of data formats to become more compatable with MS function calls. Although Mono started with the core components being compiled with the free dotNet compiler from MS, it has been self-compiling for some time now.

The anti-trust issues won't help out MS either if they file a lawsuit against Novell. Novell has some relatively deep pockets, and it would be in their interest to get into a legal fight with Microsoft, particuarly one that MS initiated. From a sheer anti-trust viewpoint it would not be a good thing for MS to engage in something like this directly, and it could only be a direct threat from MS that would amount to be worth anything, unlike the SCO fiasco. No hiding behind serrogates for this fight. Furthermore, MS would risk a counter suit from several parties (Miguel to start with) if they tried to get the software pulled, potentially costing MS quite a bit of money.

Almost all of mono is derived from the ECMA documents, which also state rather clearly (with formal waivers signed by Microsoft) that anybody is free to create their own implementation of those standards.

Where the Mono Project could run into problems is if somebody (in a really stupid moment) decided to include some "shared source" source code from MS into Mono. This would be the same issue that Linux is facing from SCO, and when that goes to court it will have a final court ruling on that issue. If SCO wins by some act of God, it will become a huge issue for almost all open source/free software projects, not just Mono. I don't know if the courts have the political will to shut down a multi-billion dollar industry that easily over a technical ruling. Besides, the remedies to fix an issue like that are very easily done, and can even be done in a very pristine "clean room" atmosphere to replace any code that caused problems like that.

I would have no problem testifying in court that Mono and dotNet are two totally different pieces of software, from benchmarks and I/O behavior to variable names and even Mono-only software classes.

What is going to be interesting is that Mono, now that they are at version 1.0, is going to be in a position to actually drive mindshare with this system. I predict that you will seem MS backporting some of the mono class features (including method names... even a mono.* class naming system) into standard dotNet. The question would then become who is driving the development for whom?

Yes, I dont trust Microsoft, and won't rely upon their goodwill. True as well, if you had developed a completely independent virtual OS (like dotNet or Java), there might not be as much to argue here, but then again, you might even be in more danger of violating a patent, simply because you weren't aware of it.

I think a much bigger threat for a submarine patent that would threaten Mono would come from Sun, or even some silly 3rd party that filed a patent 5-10 years ago covering virtual operating systems. The concern then is not with Microsoft, but with the USPTO instead.

Re:Microsoft can kill this project anytime it choo

[elflord]

If Mono ever does really take off, Microsoft can clip its wings off in an instant.

No they can't. read the FAQ

Interesting paper

[SuperKendall]

You can implement scheme on the JVM too - read this paper comapring the compilation of Scheme to C, the JVM, and the CLR! It was put on 6/16/2004 so is pretty recent - the link came from here

One interesting result is that precompiling .Net executables yielded no perforamnce gain over just leaving the executable in IL!

Also, the .Net VM was found at this time to be generally slower than the JVM.

I couldn't really find a complete Scheme for .Net - Scheme.Net is still pretty new, and Hotdog is not really done yet either.

Re:Interpreted languages

[daveaitel]

I think the biggest problem with .Net is that it's not interpreted enough. Despite the work being done to pretend that it can handle it, no one has a decent interpreted langauge (i.e. perl, Python) running in it that can use any of the real features of the VM. The funny thing is to hear Miguel and others rave about how much faster they are coding now that they are using C# rather than C. Imagine how much more they'd rave if they were using Python, which has the same advantages for RAD over C# that C# has over C. And it has GTK bindings, just like GTK#, only more mature.

If only they'd thrown their weight behind a Python Gnome, and made that the standard language...

I noticed in Miguel's post that he posited that you wanted real arrays of ints for speed reasons, instead of arrays of integer objects. But in a large application, speed is more commonly gained by doing intelligent caching - something easy in Python, but brutally hard in C# or C.

And there's no Patent issues or other nonsense.

Re:My System got Mono!

[Teunis]

debian-unstable's had the packages for a while. Works for everything I've tried... have to admit I haven't tried that much yet, but so far so good. Works nicely with apache2 last I tried.