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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?"
Yes, off topic, but it's nice to see a well written and concise topic summary around here once in a while.
The strategy for dealing with patents is discussed on the Wikipedia article about Mono. It is not a well thought out strategy.
It's probably good that Mono exists, it may have uses in some situations. It may help people get out of .Net related lock-in, but in general it should not be built upon.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
So Fedora Core 5 will be shipping with a virus!
I don't really care about windows programs running on linux, though this is of course an interesting subject.
What's more important is that the stupid infighting about what role mono could play in Gnome can now finally end.
Mono seems to offer something that many people like and can now finally simply be used to build great programs for Gnome (just like pythong, jave, etc.), without being preoccupied with Fedora and thus a large Gnome distribution not shipping mono.
First time the "Kissing Disease" has ever been accessable to geeks.
.Net apps, but I can't help but think we'd be better off with another language. .Net is so freaking encumbered.
.Net apps on Linux servers...
One the one hand, I'm all in favor of open source alternatives, and it adds a lot to linux to be able to run
Still, it'd be nice to be able to host
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
This will mean that in future, all native Windows applications will easily run on Linux, with Mono. .NET? .NET in the near future.
Will all major Windows applications be rewritten to
I just can't imagine Adobe, Autodesk, Corel, etc. translating their code to
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
And this is probably what MS had in mind all along. And I don't see it changing either. Microsoft make it easy to slap together apps with their stack and tools. Mono makes it hard to do the same with theirs. That means Mono will constantly be playing catch-up with Microsoft, reaching for but never getting close to 100% compatibility.
As a Gentoo user I wouldn't expect any package to be summarily left out. What I worry about is for packages such like Mono to become deeply embedded in distributions and create lots of dependencies, like Python. Python is increasingly a boil on the butt of GNU/Linux systems. Mono could go the same way.
an ill wind that blows no good
This will mean that in future, all native Windows applications will easily run on Linux, with Mono.
How about
This may mean that in the future, some native Windows applications will run on Linux, with Mono.
Not a chance. All of the MS application base (including the new ".NET" stuff) still depends on the underlying Win32 system functions, DLLs, etc. The newer interpreted APIs are just wrappers around the older stuff.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Patents are (supposed) to protect a novel way of doing something. If you can watch that something occur and come up with the same thing, how novel was it?
I know that doesn't mean much once someone already has a patent and a lawyer, but still.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
This will mean that in future, all native Windows applications will easily run on Linux, with Mono.
If by "the future" you mean "never", then this is correct. Otherwise, this is balderdash.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
The question is: Will Mono support these new features, and if so, when?
I use python for just about everything including machine automation at work. A distro without python would be absolutely worthless to me. Hell ain't the gentoo ports system built on python?(don't know for sure I don't use gentoo).
Got Code?
"The problematic parts are not the core technologies submitted to the ECMA or the Unix/Gnome-specific parts."
The problem (software patents) can affect any part. If MS have claimed they don't have patents on "core parts", you cannot trust them. If the Mono devs have claimed that MS don't have patents on "core parts", they are saying something they can't possibly know.
As well as including "according to the public statements of MS and the Mono devs", you should also read that sentence with the qualification: "for now anyway".
if you say something is not well thought out, also saying why
The reasons why their plan is not well though out are given in that article, in the last paragraph of that section, just after the list of the 3 strategies.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
This will mean that in future, all native Windows applications will easily run on Linux, with Mono Maby, but Mono is sorta like java. the .Net Programs will be portable as long as the developers don't use Microsoft APIs like java is portable to gcj as long as you don't use the com.sun.* packages etc.
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
Winforms on mono is not complete yet and it will be a long time before a compatibility WinFX layer is ready. Mono is great for what it is, not for what it could be.
Cheers,
Adolfo
..... why wasn't the Open Source clone of the "C#" programming language called "Db" ?
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Parent got it more right than you. WinFX is the next iteration of the .NET BCL which is a collection of managed APIs, including (that is, now adding) WCF (Windows Communication Foundation, formerly known as Indigo) and WPF (Windows Presentation Fondation, formerly known as Avalon) and WWF (Windows Workflow Foundation). XAML is the declarative (XML-markup) which is similar to XUL. All that can be done in XAML can also be done in code; elements used in mark-up will be immediately available as first class objects in C# and friends.
The whole "run Win-apps under Linux" really is a little misleading. That's not really the point of Mono for most users.
The point, rather, is that it is a very, very nice development environment and a very pleasant language, well-suited for application development, as f-spot and others are a testament to. As a bonus, the apps written under mono will be easy to deploy under Windows as well, should it be needed.
And when you use Mono to write desktop apps under Linux you aren't using anything Windows-related that isn't covered by the ECMA standard. You have no larger exposure to patent issues than you have under any other environment (possibly barring plain C and POSIX libs. Possibly).
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Something like this: http://www.cygwin.com/ ? :-)
And there's a ports site, too: http://cygwinports.dotsrc.org/ KDE, Gnome, Xfce4 and many apps. Very nice
If anyone thinks that Mono will allow applications that were written on windows to the windows implementation of .net will somehow run seemlessly under linux, think again. .net is largely a scripting front end for native windows C++ dlls. Yes there are some implemenations of some of the .net libraries for mono but there is no way that 90% of the code written for .net will ever work under linux. Even applicatons written specifically for mono, like paperboy or beagle are shakey at best.
.net framework is useful, but if you want to get/write/use cross platform applications, say away from propietary M$ technology.
I suppose mono is interesting if you think the
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
The trouble with Java, at present, is that full implementations (complete with all the latest J2EE, Java 1.whatever-is-latest) are proprietary to Sun and other commercial vendors. You can't include a full-scale Java with a Linux distribution; the licenses won't permit it, as the implementations aren't "free" the way Linux and attendant software in a Linux distribution need to be.
The lowest common denominator takes you back to partial implementations of Java 1.2 or the like; Kaffe, Classpath, and the like, with no Swing GUI and I'm not sure if Eclipse will run well with these "partial" Java environments.
MONO avoids all that; the free implementation is reasonably full featured, seemingly moreso than the "libre software" implementations of parts of Java.
I doubt it'll actually provide all that much interoperability with Windows. But the point of it was that the Ximian folk were getting tired of fighting with writing C memory management code for dynamic applications like Evolution. If they can write "Evolution Next Generation" using MONO, and have it be smaller, more componentized, more powerful, and more robust than struggling with the C version, that could be the "killer app" that makes MONO worthwhile in its own right, ignoring Microsoft's software.
It seems to me that Beagle is one of the relevant components for MONO-based "killer apps."
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Not quite, Mono also includes a VM that interprets the .net bytecode, much like java.
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
This will mean that in future, all native Windows applications will easily run on Linux, with Mono. Will Mono achieve what WINE could not?"
Mono will certainly not ever come anywhere *close* to being able to run "all native Windows applications", there's like half a dozen independent reasons for that, ranging from your "it'd require a recompile in any case" trough unpleasant little facts like the fact that Mono is trying to chase a moving target that is willing to spend a lot of money and man-hours precicely to *avoid* that too much works with Mono.
In sum, they'll have all the problems of Wine, and then some. (the need for sourcecode f.ex)
Worse yet: the mono-developers are suggesting one migth want to develop OSS applications with a primary target being Free OSes under Mono. Doing so would be double hurtful: It'd ensure that any such application developed for Linux works perfectly under Windows (because mono is a *subset* of the MS-environment, AND because all OSS-applications come with source), but *not* the oposite.
It's a braindead waste of time. I don't see how I can put it more politely. It actively hurts the Free Software ecosystem.
People in Europe and Britain are kinda safe right now. Software patents are being granted, and are being used as the basis of litigation threats that the recipients can't afford to contest, but at least the courts are on our side, so far.
This situation is not stable. If China, India, and Latin America bring in software patents, then Europe will probably give in at a subsequent world trade agreement.
To keep people in Britain and Europe safe, people in Britain and Europe must take action - and one easy way to do this is to donate to competent, active groups such as FSFE. One way to do this is to join The Fellowship of FSFE, and also encourage others to join.
Here's a webpage about how and why to support FSFE's Fellowship campaign.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
This more general patent problem is not limited to Microsoft and not limited to Mono. Java is no more protected, and neither is any other reasonably modern implementation of anything non-trivial.
The only way to be _sure_ you aren't violating a patent is to turn off the computer and leave it altogether.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
This will mean that in future, all native Windows applications will easily run on Linux, with Mono. Will Mono achieve what WINE could not?"
BULLSHIT
mono will run into the same problem wine and free java have. if developers develop for one implementation you will be hard pressed to make an alternate implementation that works flawlessly with the apps those developers develop.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
IMHO, dual boot is a pain. I prefer coLinux http://www.colinux.org/ :-)
And I think it runs on Linux, too
I think this is good news. I use FC4 and include Novell's mono repos. It's the only outside repo I use, all other stuff I build/hack/package myself. This means I won't have to use any repos besides Core and Extras, which rocks. Maybe this will mean they'll also include Muine? My fave musicplayer, which happens to be a Mono app. Who cares about them windows compat features anyway? There's enough coolness in Mono on itself to warrant its inclusion into FC5. More languages, more choices. Sounds great!
At the time when the company sponsoring the project and taking legal responsibility for the actions of the project feel comfortable that they are either safe from patent infringement or are willing to take on the patent's legal standing. NTFS is a clearly patented technology, as is mp3 and case history shows that judges have been willing to rule in favor of the patent holder.
RedHat holds the strings on the Fedora project because it's RedHat's project. They pay for the equipment, bandwidth and a large portion of the developement community. It's their prerogative to do as they see fit, much like the Debian leaders control that project and Linus and team control the standard kernel tree. If you don't like, there are other distros out there, use something else.
WinFx is not the next .net framework, it is the next generation API set.
It's an encompassing term, covering Presentation Foundation (how you display things on screen), Communications Foundation (secure program to program stuff), WinFS (the meta data "file system"), Workflow and Infocard (authenication and authorisation), all of which exposed as a managed code API.
It is also not limited to Vista, most of it will be back ported to XP and 2003. Look upon it as a Win32 replacement for .net. Now imagine implementing that from clean room code. Stop crying at the back.
So whilst the summary may be concise, it is not, I am afraid, accurate.
You are half right.
I personally believe that most projects spent on emulating something Microsoft has done is a waste of time. Historically Microsoft has had very little contribution to the computer industry that has any significant longevity or impact outside of their own interests.
With the exception of MONO, I am not aware of any projects to emulate Microsoft versions of languages (eg: Visual Basic). In contrast, Perl, Python, Ruby, Lisp, Java, C/C++ where all languages that were developed someplace other than Windows and have managed to remain rather viable to date. And they have some degree of cross platform compatability depending on the platforms and the constructs of the language used.
If you look at their other products: Office was nice but it's getting a bit out of hand. But OpenOffice covers >90% of the functionality. And it's something that is available on and compatible with more OS platforms than Office. Long term, it's ultimately a better buy.
About the only arena that Windows might have advantages is with IDE's. But I'm not a big fan of most of the IDE's out there. They tend to assume your code style and ultimately you end up debugging your code on the contributions of the IDE rather than your own contributions or the contributions of others. When you spend time trying to fix your code because of your Environment, it's time to move to a new environment. But that's just my opinion. A lot of people absolutely love their IDEs.
But I have to disagree with the conclusion that you can just write everything in Java to make it cross platform compatable. Yes, you probably can. But Java just isn't that special anymore. It's not the only language that's cross platform capable. It has never really lived up to it's proclaimed write once run anywhere mantra. It's done well, but it's never been a guarantee. More like, write once, test everywhere, hope you get lucky.
When you compare the speed of Java (start up and runtime) and the fact that it's compiled to the newer (alternative) languages like Python, Ruby (perl as an alternative) there really isn't much left for Java to do that's worth the overhead in development time and resources. My past experience with Java is that I have to keep watching out for Out of Memory errors on applications. This is the only programming language that I have experienced an Out of Memory error in the past 5 years.
I'm starting to think that languages that are not developed by companies are better than languages that are developed by companies, regardless of their intentions.
The most recent time this was discussed by the wine developers is in this thread. At one time some Mono developers were linking wine to mono, but then they got upset about the changes in the Wine API for Linux programs (this was before the 0.9 release), and they decided to just do all WinForms-related stuff with native .NET code. AFAIK no one has tried to do anything in that direction since the 0.9 release.
Eclipse is a package in FC4, compiled with gcj. It's fairly stable, and the user-interface is the same as in a version of Eclipse running with Sun Java on another platform.
The inclusion of Mono in Fedora is the first step towards healing a rather serious potential rift in the GNOME world. Up until now, you could not develop a Mono-app with GTK# and expect it to work on all major updated distributions without added software.
Don't worry about Windows compatibility, Mono is cool enough on it's own, especially because Novell/Ximian has done such a good job with the Mono-wrappers for GNOME-technologies. Hopefully this will see more GNOME-development.
"Mono is not quite here for prime time - it is slow and sluggish"
.net themselves...
that never hampered java and
I don't feel like it...
MainForm.cs(35,26): error CS0234: The type or namespace name `Windows' does not exist in the namespace `System'. Are you missing an assembly reference?
Also, C# 2.0 isn't complete, are you sure you shouldn't be using mcs over gmcs?
http://www.mono-project.com/CSharp_Compiler
Any way you dice it LINQ provides an interesting new approach (for procedural or OOP languages) to tackling querying data, regardless of it's source.
Very telling entry from Miguel's own blog.
What's on display here isn't even remotely close to a cooperative spirit to further a community standard. It is more of a Cold War.
ECMA? Who cares... ECMA trying to set the direction of C# and CLR is like steering a truck with a flea.
If you like virtual machines, mono is the only one that performs well and is open source and is designed to be almost programming language independent.
.Net run again? And how many are not bastard neutered languages like managed C++?
It's awfully funny how C# developers all the sudden get all teary-eyed over the ability to use any other language than C# when the topic of faster JVM's comes up...
But then someone has to go and mention that the JVM runs about 200 languages. How many does
So I guess you need to re-phrase your statement to say "if you want to have access to many langauges, and have the fastest VM you should really just drop Mono/.Net like a hot potato and stick with Java - until you decide to try a real language on for size and move to Ruby."
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Okay, there are several areas that .Net/Mono etc encompass. First, there is the core Common Language Runtime; this is what runs a given application. The CLR is well defined within the ECMA/ISO standards, as is most of (second) the core framework. Microsoft extends the core framework with ADO.Net (command data layer) Microsoft.* (VB Compatability objects and a few others), ASP.Net (web apps, and services) allong with SWF (Windows forms).
.Net, there are other areas it has that MS's framework doesn't include... By the same note, you could say similar things to C++ development, if doing GUI development. You don't get the MS libraries for windows development in GCC, but you can still create GUI apps that are portable.
Mono already has the core framework, as well as compatability for most of the rest... Some areas are indeed incomplete, but not in a way that inhibits current apps. Mono also includes several DB adapters that aren't inside the MS distribution, in addition to GTK# (for gnome/gtk based app development, which can be relatively portable to windows and mac), there are also a few other goodies on the mono side (Posix library, etc).
You *can* develop a portable application under mono without touching any of MS's extensions, and it can still be portable. Which is imho a good thing. There are other libraries for QT (kde), audio, opengl etc, some of the projects around them are stagnant, but usable. Mono isn't just a subset of
Mono is an implimentation of a standard, with some compatability to proprietary extensions, and including some extensions (F/OSS) of their own. In addition to many 3rd party libraries. For rapid app dev (RAD), it's really a second to none thing. You get a complete framework, bytecode portability both of these other frameworks offer. In addition to a key element, *MUCH* easier interaction with system libraries not part of the core framework. This is the kicker here, you can target system APIs *VERY* readily, making core functionality easier to do, than other managed environments.
I am no big fan of MS by any means, but to be honest, regarding patent litigation, they haven't shut WINE down, which is *FAR* more infringing than anything mono is doing, not to mention that under litigation they could strip the infringing parts and still have core functionality in place. There's a lot of prior art for anything ASP.Net does, how ADO.Net interacts, and the current winforms are dying (as far as ms marketting is concerned in favor of WinFX). Mono has been around for several years now, with no litigation in sight.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Wrong. Linux enthusiasts LOVE standards - lots and lots of them! And if (when) they don't find a standard that fits their own requirements, they'll happily make a new one to compete, thereby adding to the glorious beauty of standards: that there are so many to choose from.
Sorry I'm going to have to call you on this. After years of developing commercially with .NET I've never once had to make a native call. I'd be interested to know what activities you think routinely require this.
That's proof by *false* analogy buddy. Your wiki link is only helpful if you demonstrate that the analogy is false. Also, an argument by way of analogy is a fine way to make a normative argument, even if it's not a good way to construct a formal proof. This is because norms are in fact quite imprecise and depend greatly on context; a good analogy between things that are alike in meaningful ways can provide a great deal of insight into how to approach an issue.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Wrong. If you watch the video of Anders Hejlsberg demonstrating LINQ, you'll notice that it's a language feature, not a MSSQL-only layer, and he actually demonstrates using LINQ not only with MSSQL but XML documents and arrays (IIRC) too.
:)
Miguel De Icaza's comment on the video was "Anders Hejlsberg is a man of excellent taste"
The video is a bit on the long side, but it's well worth it if you're interested in the topic
Governments in countries with a high level of poverty are not going to do anything that benefits the rich at the expense of the poor -- they will be deposed quicker than you can spell AK-47.
Clearly you don't live in the third world. Things are a lot more complex than that.
In general governments are very big beasts. One sector can be pro Linux and another is just buying MS because is what they use. And we are having lots of pressure from USA and other countries to introduce patents on everything, from software to GM seeds.
"I think this line is mostly filler"
Mono is a trojan horse. Letting it into Linux distros is BAD. We're inviting patent issues into Linux which is stupid.
Well, time to switch to Debian - I *will not* run that crap.
The recent beta of IronPython exposed some bugs in our 2.x VM implemnetation, luckly they have been fixed.
Download 1.1.13 (available now).