Fedora Core 5 includes Mono

cyberjessy writes "Surprise! The Fedora Core 5 Release will include Mono in the distribution, in spite of Red Hat's opposition. In addition to the Mono runtime, it will also include Mono applications like Beagle and F-Spot. Is the Linux community finally ready to accept Mono? Mono is becoming increasing important due to Windows Vista, which has WinFX (the next .Net Framework) as its core API. This will mean that in future, all native Windows applications will easily run on Linux, with Mono. Will Mono achieve what WINE could not?"

Comments

Some interesting stuff coming in .NET

[Sanity]

Microsoft has some interesting technologies in the pipeline for .NET 3.0. One of the most exciting is LINQ which will change the way we interact with SQL databases, and data in general from within our code. Other language enhancements will mean that Java has a lot of catching up to do (and no, I'm not a M$ fanboy, Java is my tool of choice and I use a Mac).

The question is: Will Mono support these new features, and if so, when?

Vista will muddle the developer landscape

[boxlight]

Mono is becoming increasing important due to Windows Vista

As a developer, I have great concern over how Vista will muddle the Windows landscape. Microsoft is creating a situation where developers have to build and test for way too many Windows platforms.

That is, many developers and network administrators use Windows 2000 exclusively and most other pros and home users use XP -- and my father in law still uses Windows 98. NONE of these people have any intention of upgrading to Vista. So Vista will likely only be installed on new PCs

It's getting to the point where there's just too many versions of Windows out there to support:

Win 98 SE
Win 2k Workstation and Server(s)
Win XP Home and Pro
Win Vista??

And the pointy-haired-bosses will continue to shout that *all* versions of Windows must be supported. That means more development, more testing, more installers, more deep sighs.

The "write once run anywhere" of Java is becoming more attractive all the time.

boxlight

Re:Summary

[Jugalator]

Yes, as far as I know, there are no plans to clone "WinFX" at this point for Vista compatibility.

WinFX is far from required for "Vista compatibility". Basically no applications will use WinFX when Vista is released, and I have to wonder how many Windows developers are actually ready to jump ship from unmanaged C++ to .NET and WinFX. The new WinFX development models with e.g. Windows Presentation Foundation and XAML for UI development, etc. are totally incompatible with current C++ applications. It feels like several years ahead at the very least.

As for the Windows.Forms namespace, it's well underway actually. In the November 2005 status report, word is:

Windows.Forms is the only piece that is holding us from officially renaming Mono to Mono 1.2, it is still missing a few features. Our plan is to complete the missing features by the end of this month and then move to bug fixing and testing open source our publicly accessible Windows.Forms applications. We are planning on spending three months on bug fixing at this point.

This hardly sounds too unattainable to me.

And before anyone asks, no, Windows Forms 2.0 support isn't required for "Vista compatibility" either.