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A Bare-Bones Linux+Mono+GUI Distro?
nimble99 writes "I am a computer software engineer, focused mainly on the Windows platform — but most of my development time is spent in .NET. I would like to move my .NET development to Linux in the form of Mono, in an attempt at building a media-center type of device. All I require, is a base operating system with simple hardware support, Mono, and a window manager that (preferably) does nothing but act as a host for mono applications. Is this available? I dont know a lot about Linux, so I thought I would ask if there is already something like this available. Obviously a 'Mono Operating System' would be the cleanest solution, but a similar thing could be achieved with the barest minimum of Linux distros right?"
You could build a Gentoo install to satisfy this. With Gentoo you build the system to fit what you want out of it.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Monoppix perhaps?
I haven't tried it yet but the description sounds about right.
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
Did he ask you your opinion on the .net Framework/Stack? I am pretty much against Microsoft as much as anyone, but given the fact that their .net is pretty-much-fkinly-successful, maybe Mono can get some .net programmers to cross the bridge.
.net. Therefore, it is NOT a microsoft product. It's more akin to Wine than Windows.
Also, Mono TECHNICALLY isn't a Windows infrastructure. It's heavily based on a Microsoft-created execution and "vm" stack (vm not so much, but i disgress), but it's a reimplementation of
This is my opinion. Everyone has a right to my opinion.
Thank you for answering the question. A truly informative, well thought out, and highly insightful post. I'm sure with your great advice the asker will make great strides in his project. And following along your high standards more technical solutions and products will be introduced to the market.
Thank you,
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Ubuntu Server edition installs as just a command line without all the fluff. From there you could add Mono and any GUI of your choice.
Bearded Dragon
Just install a basic net installation of Debian. You'll get nothing but a console. Apt-get the GUI of your choice. Apt-get Mono. You're done.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If you are on windows and have decent ram you can try the mono vmware image. It boots opensuse desktop and has mono and monodevelop ready to go. go here: http://www.go-mono.com/mono-downloads/download.html Click on the vmware image.
I'm a Windows developer who uses Linux at home.
.NET model and the C# language (Anders Hejlsberg has been my hero ever since he developed Delphi during his Borland years) that I cannot help but prefer its usage, even in a Linux environment.
As a user, I am philosophically opposed to Mono as an unwanted Windows fingerprint on my completely FOSS system (except for my nVidia drivers; alas, I am not perfect).
As a developer, I am so completely convinced of the superiority of the
I'm thinking about developing a split personality to deal with this paradox.
Mono is developed by Novell, so if that's your main app it would make sense to use their Linux distribution, SuSE. Either as OpenSuSE (or whatever the capitalization is these days; cf NeXTStep) or SLES. It is not minimal but it includes the latest Mono stuff and you can probably pay for support if you want. Since there is some overlap between Mono developers and GNOME developers and some GNOME applications like Banshee, F-Spot and Tomboy are written in C#, it probably makes sense to use GNOME as your desktop environment.
That said, I'm quite happy with Fedora, Mono packages are included, and if you need something more recent than the last Fedora version you can easily compile it yourself.
Your job is to be a software developer, not a desktop-customization weenie. So forget about spending time on making or finding a 'minimal' environment. Any modern Linux distribution won't get in your way and will let you get on with porting your apps to Mono.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
No you probably don't.
What about a web browser for research? An IRC client for asking questions?
Ubuntu is will do what you want. It may have a few extras you don't need so uninstall them.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Use Qt4 and forget about MONO and .NET. You won't regret it.
Death is life's great reward. R. Hoek
Bah. The yardstick is not 'has nothing to do with Microsoft Windows' but rather 'gives you and others freedom to use, share and change the software'. If you just wanted to eliminate Microsoft you could buy a Mac and not buy Office for it. Mono is completely free and open source software. Yes, it is a clone of a proprietary system, just as GNU started out as a clone of proprietary Unix.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
You can also try the live CD for opensuse its available in the download section http://www.go-mono.com/mono-downloads/download.html
Both of you let us know how that's working for you!
That is all.
I've been playing around with Debian Live recently and the level of control you have over package selection and customization is impressive. It takes a little work to get used to the build system and how to customize your final image, but after you get through it once it is very simple.
You also have the ability to build images for CD-Rom's, usb sticks, netboot or hard drive images.
If you are not familiar with Linux, this route may be like jumping into the deep end. As others have mentioned, you may be better off using a canned distro like Monoppix while you do your development so you know exactly what you need in the end. Once you are comfortable and ready to move toward your final product, look towards Debian live.
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
There are an infinite number of solutions to this problem. Everything from Gentoo to Knoppix to Puppy Linux (for the love of God, avoid the last).
Do you:
( ) Intend to use it as a liveCD?
( ) Want disk tools in the installer to allow you to keep a windows partition?
( ) Want to avoid significant configuration?
( ) Have no Linux experience whatsoever?
( ) Want it to exist in a partition WITH Windows?
( ) Have better things to do than sift through the inevitable 2541 comments?
There are a dozen different distributions that would fulfill any of the possible permutations of the above requirements. Coupling that with giving you the smallest possible distro that's as full featured as you need, we could narrow it down to one (or two, or three, depending on the cooperation of the Linux geeks in question) solution(s).
I wonder how many people moderated your first post troll and flamebait as a proxy for moderating the original question as a troll. It's pretty hard to view it as anything else, when there is no real justification for actually wanting Linux given.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I had this exact requirement for building my point of sale device. My solution was to go with something like Damn Small Linux and modifying it. Basically, I altered it to be apt enabled yet again instead of using their package management and then pointed it at the debian repos. One apt-get install later and I had everything I needed to host a .NET GUI application. You could probably get away with a minimal debian install as well, but DSL and its brethren generally have good package selection for smallness.
its the simplest and lightest windowmanager that I have seen. Ofcourse, tthere are probably other options. Generally, the packages are available for most distros but I would advise you to use gentoo since you can make it as lightweight as you want depending on your requirements, but gentoo requires you to know a thing or two already about linux.
They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me. -Nathaniel Lee
I dont know a lot about Linux, so I thought I would ask if there is already something like this available.
Anyway, here is my suggestion, but, as another poster has already pointed out, any Linux/GUI permutation would probably work just as well:
Some people would argue that using Slackware for this is crazy, but (a) Slackware is a lean and mean developement platform, and a very lean Linux distribution and (b) it will teach you a lot of things about Linux, and UNIX in general.
I hope this helps!
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Is that exact arrangement pre-made? Probably not. Why don't you let us know what you're trying to accomplish so that we can steer you in the right direction?
I'm a KDE guy, but my first suggestion would be to install Ubuntu with the stock Gnome desktop. Just because you can run other applications doesn't mean that you have to.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I didn't realise that the guy who did Delphi had anything to do with C#. I quite like Delphi and use it for any Windows GUIs I make. I still don't really want to start using MS' proprietary anything, even if it was designed by a genius, but thanks for the info.. if MS can clean up their act with Windows 7 then I may be able to put up with them for another while, and may even look into .NET (if Delphi doesn't already use it by default).
which is totally what she said
I don't see how this is a flamebait. He's absolutely right. I use Linux for Linux development, and Windows for Windows development. The only exception is when I'm scripting in Python or something, then I can just check os.name or the like.
Your ad here.
I think GP's comment is quite valid. His comment was on the popularity of the framework on the Linux side of the fence, which is pretty much true. Outside of Suse, I'm not sure there's a lot of traction for Mono.
>I am so completely convinced of the superiority of the .NET model and the C# language
Your sentence is missing something: the superiority of C# *compared to what*??
Or you believe that C# is the best language currently?
I agree that C# is superior to C++ for ease of development (but not for speed and memory usage),
but I don't find it superior to Scala.
A small intro to Scala: http://www.artima.com/scalazine/articles/steps.html
AFAIK, there is no such thing as a Linux-based "Mono OS". You'll probably need to modify an existing distro. Since you claim not to be a Linux expert, Ubuntu might be a good choice, but it's a bit of a heavyweight. You'd need to spend a lot of time disabling features to trim it down, which requires quite a bit of Linux knowledge, so it doesn't really help you avoid learning Linux. Same applies to Fedora, SuSE, etc. If you intend to develop on a platform that closely resembles your target platform, keep in mind that these are arguably "nicer" distros for daily use than the ones I'm about to suggest. Something like Gentoo gives you a lot of customizability, and works on lots of hardware (possibly a plus if you plan to put your media center on exotic hardware). Easier to use, but still lightweight, is Arch Linux, which would be my personal preference for a project such as this. It's very lightweight, and relatively easy to use. You still need to be comfortable with command-line, config files, man pages etc., but it's better than Gentoo or LFS. The only isssue I can see is that it's 686-optimized, so it might not fit your hardware.
#1 Download debian netinst or ubuntu server.
#2 Install distro.
#3 aptitude search mono
#4 sudo aptitude install etc.
#5 sudo aptitude install xorg fluxbox
#6 ???
#7 Profit.
à_à
"I am a computer software engineer, focused mainly on the Windows platform -- but most of my development time is spent in .NET. I would like to move my .NET development to Linux in the form of Mono, in an attempt at building a media-center type of device. All I require, is a base operating system with simple hardware support, Mono, and a window manager that (preferably) does nothing but act as a host for mono applications. Is this available?
.NET. Mono is C# with a large number of bindings to FOSS, including Gtk+ and Gnome. So, that means you need a fairly complete complement of all the C libraries. If you want .NET on Linux, you need all of that, plus the .NET compatibility libraries; those are not usually installed. In addition to that, Linux needs its package management, installation, upgrade, system maintenance, indexing, and other tools. Those mean that you have to have a POSIX environment and a reasonable complement of C and C++ libraries.
.NET compatibility packages installed. Ubuntu and Xubuntu are good choices.
.NET on Linux; use Gtk# and C# bindings of the Linux native libraries instead. Monodevelop should make it pretty easy to get started, and Gtk# is a reasonable and easy-to-learn toolkit.
Mono is not
So, basically, what you want is one of the basic Gnome or XFCE distributions, with the additional
Everybody occasionally dreams of getting rid of all the "old stuff" and just replacing it with something "modern" written entirely in the language-du-jour. But there are several reasons against that: (1) the old stuff works well enough, (2) it's not clear that you can do better, and (3) the old stuff has proven that it has staying power; C# may be gone in three years and you have to start from scratch.
I would also recommend against programming in
If you want to use Linux, don't plan to develop for it in a Windows-bound way, and don't expect Linux developers to support Windows infrastructure on their system. Mono is Miguel's pet project, and no one outside Novell and Microsoft cares about it.
.NET applications don't run on Mono out of the box.
.NET apps, you need to install the .NET libraries for Mono. I can't think of any Mono desktop app on Linux that actually uses those.
Mono has little to do with a "Windows infrastructure". Standard Mono installs on Linux contain the ECMA C# runtime and libraries, plus Gtk# and a lot of other FOSS libraries.
If you want to run
If you are looking for a barebones distro, try gentoo (gentoo.org). For a barebones window manager, perhaps try something like fluxbox or blackbox. Pretty much, gentoo will give you a base system and it will be up to you to set everything up.
Klingon Software is not released, it escapes, inflicting terrible damage onto the enemy as it does
DSL is also a good choice for a set-top box - only 50MB of disk space required, and it is based on Debian so pretty much any application you want/need is already packaged and available in the repository.
That said, if you are going to be doing Mono development you will want a full desktop environment - for that any distro will work fine. I'd go with a full Debian install on your development machine so you have the same library versions/builds on both systems.
For the final media center PC, you don't actually need a window manager - you can run X11 applications without a WM, and if all you are doing is running a single fullscreen app that is often preferable. I used to do that when running quake on memory starved systems. Do a search for the xinitrc file to learn how to set that up.
.NET is nice. But it doesn't seem such a massive improvement as some people make it seem. I use .NET a lot, and I have touched Java and I am familiar with C++. I don't see much that .NET exclusively offers. My favourite language is still Python however. And I may be letting my perception of Microsoft and the destruction of Delphi cloud my judgment. .NET is nice on Windows, definitely. But on Linux, there are so many more alternatives.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Myth is a bit of a nightmare though, and personally I don't think the media player side of it is that great.
If you don't need PVR then I can heartily recommend XBMC, it's awesome.
http://xbmc.org/
Check out Vala: C# like syntax, no runtime, FOSS.
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
Actually it goes further then this:
.NET API implementations (WinForms etc) are to .NET what WINE is to Windows. (I.e. great for easy porting, but destined never to be perfect). Though WinForms is a much simpler and better documented API then the Win32 beast.
Mono's
However Mono's VM is more comparable to x86. It is a published standard and Intel's initial development of it doesn't give them much intrinsic advantage over AMD. (And hopefully Mono's OSS nature will prove equivalent to Intel's fabrication advantage).
Mono's compilers can also be directly compared to GCC v Intel's compiler. No one would write off either, just because Intel also designed the architecture.
Then you come to Mono's own libraries GTK#, Tao, Gecko#.
See http://blog.secondlife.com/2005/08/01/second-life-in-mono/ for a clear example of Mono as the best tool for the job.
> I'm thinking about developing a split personality to deal with this paradox.
I think both of you already have. =)
Why?
the purpose is better filled with MythTV
I would agree if it wasn't for the fact that you yourself have said in the past it's a nightmare to get running correctly.
Vista's DRM makes media a headache
Agenda much?
no way M$ will share enough information
Ah, the "M$ will kill Mono" meme. I'm not sure what good it would do if I even try to address that. People who are smarter than me have tried and gotten nothing but ridicule and abuse from people like you.
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
After reading the interviews on artima.com with Anders it's pretty clear that he's mostly a blowhard -- like Beck, all style and no substance. Take this for example:
Bill Venners:
Anders Hejlsberg: They can never inline a virtual method invocation.
Bill Venners: My understanding is that these JVM's first check if the type of the object on which a virtual method call is about to be made is the same as the one or two they expect, and if so, they can just plow on ahead through the inlined code.
Anders Hejlsberg: Oh, yes. You can optimize for the case you saw last time and check whether it is the same as the last one, and then you just jump straight there.
Not only is Anders being handed his hat by the interviewer, but he doesn't even realize that for almost ten years all Java methods have been effectively final until overridden, doing exactly that which he says is impossible. There is no 'same as last time' check since it is compiled as if there was one function. There is no 'jump straight there' when the method is inlined, and no performance lost from virtual methods that are not overridden. In contrast,
None these guys on the core C# team were anywhere close to the same level as say Joy or Bracha, and it shows. Yeah, if you're coming from Win32 and MFC then C#/.net seems pretty awesome, but it's not. They made a lot of really bad design decisions that make it really suck compared to what it could be and what they ripped it off from. So it kind of depresses me a little bit when people gush quixotic about how great
Unless you're recommending it as a packaged solution already installed on the box, I'd recommend you STOP pushing MythTV. It's bloody impossible for 99% of people to install and configure correctly.
That and the fancy "M$" thing pretty much tell me you're just peddling it because of extremism - not functionality, convenience or reality.
Wait until things actually work (and I mean end to end) before you go advocating their use. You'll be much more helpful to FOSS that way. Joe Public is not going to be happy when he tries your solution, and in the end he's just going to to a commercial product anyway. He doesn't care about freedom, Linux, apple pie or your hatred of "M$". He just wants to record TV shows.
It's not for the feint of heart, but you might look at using LFS to build such a minimal system. I don't really see the harm in using a "full" Linux machine for the development environment, and then using LFS to build the embedded image that you deploy to "real" devices. We do this where I work.
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
It'll get the job done. If your totally new to Linux, it might be a bit much, but the folks on the lists are quite helpful.
Kirby
Wow, you took a miscommunication about a very complex technical feature and turned it into "getting his hat handed to him"?
Furthermore, Anders is actually correcting the interviewer because the JVM isn't "inlining virtual method invocations", it's optimizing them.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
And I'd bet money that I'm far from alone in thinking this.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
As much as it makes sense to ask the question here, I'm afraid of the thunder of distro bashing this is going to start.
This is slashdot. We're not always rational, and we argue our tastes in linux distributions and other functionally equivalent software.
That said, someone suggested gentoo, and while as a gentoo user I applaud the suggestion, I cannot help but think that it is a little steep in the learning curve to fulfill these (relatively simple) goals. While I don't think anywhere else would like to have a distro bash party like slashdot only can, I don't know that the poster will find a decent answer...
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
There is no "windows fingerprint". .Net is free to implement, the fact that microsoft originally wrote the spec should mean fucking nothing.
.Net framework even is. If they weren't so deeply involved in the FOSS vs MSFT movement, they'd be on gamefaqs posting about how superior the PS3 port of GTA4 is to the EVIL COPRORATE XBLOCKS 3-SHITTXTY OMG LOL THE CONTROLLAR IS BIG! If only they could open two browser windows on their fancy new OLPC.
Linux dorks run Samba, don't they? They have no problem with a FOSS rdp client. They have no problem with FAT filesystems on their thumb drives, or burning CD's with Joliet extensions. And hey, what would a linux desktop be without Microsofts font pack for the web?
So why the fuck would they get their philosophical panties in a bunch over mono?
Oh yeah, I forgot. It's because they aren't real geeks, let alone coders, and they don't know what the
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Just grab the Ubuntu Alternate install CD, or start from Debian. Same principle, but no real point in getting Ubuntu Server -- you probably want the generic kernel anyway, not the server kernel.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Except for the part where I said a Microsoft language was the most superior available? That's too zealously anti-Microsoft for you to include me in a "rational discussion of these matters?" Holy crap, the fanboys have gone off the deep end.
Patents.
And yes, they exist on elements of the ECMA-334 and ECMA-335 specifications.
I'm in the same boat with you. I'm a .Net dude for windows, but it's a huge gear shift to go to C++ or C again when I jump back to linux, so I'd like to have the 'same platform' (even if that requires quotation marks) on both OS's if I could as well.
Speak for yourself.
I didn't say your zealotry was anti-Microsoft. You are striving to have only FOSS software on your system, and implied that you refuse to use closed software even if it's useful to you (unless no other option is available). That's the zealotry to which I refer, and it is quite irrational (picking software on any basis more than whether it meets your needs is nothing short of idiotic, in my opinion). Thus, it calls into question your ability to discuss other things rationally, because people aren't usually irrational on just one issue.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
For inlining a function to mean anything, it cannot be virtual. An inlined function is in essence a macro.
And Anders is more accurate than Bill. What Bill says translates to: you can turn a virtual function into an inline function with a if ( this_class__is_not_X_or_Y ) jump_to_virtual_function_table type structure. What Andres says translates to: Sure, in that case. But it's an optimization.
I see that you get the best of both worlds in that situation, but Andres is right in his unequivical "You cannot inline a virtual function." Because you cannot. You can inline exactly one version of a virtual function with an if at the top, or more if you use a bunch of ifs/a switch. But the latter removes the benefits of inlining. So, a clever compiler can have a sometimes inlined response.
And the begining of your critique is just as poor. He said that it was impossible to inline a virtual function. Stating that most functions are not virtual attacks the fact, not the logic. He said "this [disproved emperical condition] results in poor performance because of [insert logical rule] makes it impossible." Disproving the emperical condition does not disprove the logical rule.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
...an unwanted Windows fingerprint on my completely FOSS system... To me, that says zealotry, but I guess I'm quibbling. If you do not, in fact, value software license above software functionality, then I apologize. It's just an attitude that's entirely too common amongst open-source advocates here, and has really got under my skin over time."16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Lightweight? Don't no nothin' 'bout Linux?
You want Xubuntu. The official Ubuntu variant using the XFCE Desktop. Monodevelop will use quite a bit of GTK stuff though, IIRC.
Anyway, it's faster then Windows, so no downside here. But if Mono isn't enough, then I'd recommend staying with Windows. Unless, however, you want to learn more of Mono to slowly shake lose of MS. Monodevelop looks a very fine and dandy OSS IDE and even makes me curious about this Mono stuff.
Good luck and welcome on board.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
License, for me, is part and parcel with functionality. It's not the only part, however (though it is large; when I say I have philosophical bias, that bias is based on what I believe are tangible capitalistic advantages of such licenses, not the crypto-anarchism often ascribed to FOSS proponents).
In those cases where proprietary technology presents a clear technical superiority to its FOSS counterpart, even despite what benefit its license might convey, I will use the proprietary technology. In my first post, I gave two examples: C# and nVidia drivers. They are certainly not the only ones on my system.
But more to the point, inlining a function is more than just about changing a jump into a compare. It is also about the code matching up with the caller so that registers are not shuffled around and whatnot. It's about determining that the object allocated by the caller and then passed down three levels of function calls never has a reference taken so it can be allocated on the stack.
If you think inlining means 'just avoiding a jump' then you couldn't be more wrong. But what Anders said does accurately describe CLR... it will never be able to inline effectively due to its type system ('real' generics) and bytecode (have to track types, no interpreting) and other defects conspiring to make deep inlining mostly impossible. CLR is always going to be slow at running 'safe' code because it was designed on false assumptions like 'no final == slow'. [anders:] You can optimize for the case you saw last time and check whether it is the same as the last one, and then you just jump straight there Which is not the same thing as inlining, it's memoizing. So not only was Anders wrong initially, wrong to say inlining 'can never' be done, but he did not understand what the JVM does even after the interviewer explained it to him. This is your design hero?
The posts suggesting you don't re-invent the wheel are wise, especially since there are already packages out there to get you where you want to go with negligible overhead. Check out xubuntu for a pretty much out-of-the-box barebones GUI without spending a week or two (or more) learning the minutiae of Linux inner workings, or if you really want to sink your teeth in, get Gentoo running and only include packages for xfce and mono. Gentoo is pretty much a build-your-own-distro kit (at least last I used it over a year ago).
The only thing I found Gentoo could do reasonably better than Windows or a pre-built distro or even GNOME/KDE on Gentoo, ever, in months of messing with it, is that I could run a Playstation emulator (ePSXe) with no "hiccups" due to background processes kicking in every now and then. Even then I likely just am not configuring something right or I could have solved the problem with a newer and speedier processor. Believe you me, I was looking for applications of "barebones" setups--I had a huge nerd-on for only running the bare minimum of what I needed and thought it would be this vastly superior experience. It's really not.
Really, the minimalism thing is only for learning how things work, very specific situations with limited hardware power, and embedded systems. For a media center with most hardware made in the last like 5 years (or longer, depending), xubuntu will be more than enough minimalism.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
.NET is nice on Windows, definitely. But on Linux, there are so many more alternatives. It's really thatRight. That means you cannot compile versions of the the program with virtual inline functions unless every permutation is included. Depending on the complexity of the program, the scale tips at some number of versions of the program.
Depends. Cell processors have smaller caches for each core, and the bottleneck is that all the cores share one(or is it two?) pipes to RAM. Console programming tends to involve recomputation rather than fetching the previous results for suprisingly costly operations. And both of those assume you are running on a fairly modern box, as opposed to built into a handheld unit, or a MP3 player or somesuch.
Yes. The great-grandparent was claiming that somehow function calls would create variables on the heap if not inlined. I was trying to correct that.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Have you heard Stereopathetic Soulmanure?
/Mike
-- "So, what's the deal with Auntie Gerschwitz et all?"
The method containing the call is speculatively compiled with the callee inlined, just like an inline method in C++, except that the inlined code is preceded by a check that the inlining is valid. If the inlining is not valid, I'm not sure exactly what happens, but the end result is that the calling method is recompiled on the fly with the callee no longer inlined.
.NET might benefit from this kind of optimization -- though it's news to me if any platform can speculatively inline virtual C++ method calls.)
The payoff is that many virtual method calls run just as fast as nonvirtual method calls. This is a case where Java beats C++ (or rather, the JVM beats a statically compiled language with no runtime optimizations) because C++ cannot recompile at runtime and therefore must restrict itself to whatever optimizations can be validated at compile time.
(Of course, C++ code has other advantages, and C++ code running on a dynamically recompiling platform such as LLVM or
A nice side effect is that developers are encouraged to write simple, clear code, and the JVM takes responsibility for providing the performance.
So don't go back to C++. If you aren't writing little programs that need to start up and shut down quickly, use one of the many languages available for the JVM.
For nice-looking cross-platform apps based on native GUI elements, use the Eclipse RCP (Rich Client Platform) and get a ton of other functionality for free.
Java is a bit inferior to C#, but Java and C# are just the least-common-denominator systems programming languages on their platforms. There are better languages you can use -- popular alternatives for the JVM are Scala, JRuby, and Jython. Scala has had in the past, and may have in the future, a CLR implementation, though at the moment it is JVM-only.
Banshee, one of the really popular audio players, is based on Mono. When Banshee-1 comes out, a lot of people will be using it. Trust me.
... ahem ... Ubuntu 8.04 is a Mono app.
F-Spot, the default photo app for
Beagle is Mono.
Tomboy Notes is Mono.
The way I see it, most of the brand new, quickly developing application software is based on Mono.quickly
Put identity in the browser.
Hey Twat ... er ... Twit. How's it going?
He's a developer. He wants to develop. He wants to use Mono. Legal issues aside, Mono allows quick development of full-function applications. Why do you believe that Mono would have MS's DRM? Why would something written in Mono be required to listen to the broadcast flag?
You're even less coherent than usual today.
Put identity in the browser.
yeah,
/. a prety boring place, wouldn't it?
/. thread being complete without a Microsoft bashing?
but it would also make
Wasn't there a thread a few weeks ago about no single
we need an "-1 Plain wrong" moderation option!
Hell, I am a Windows developer, so I develop on Windows.
And here I just thought you were Twitter.
Put identity in the browser.
And we all know that cell processors are widely used as a platform for CLR implementations... Oh wait, it's not. Let's stick to x86 since that's what's relevant here...
I develop in Mono. I have chosen OpenSUSE over other distibutions because it's Novell behind and I thought that Novell would be the best company to packaged correctly MonoDevelop, Mono and everything else.
The OpenSUSE installation lets you remove unwanted apps. But well I have never removed anything...Quite the contrary, You always needs specific tools.
Oh...And well you are going to develop pro applications right? So I wouldn't advice to take the last little distribution...Somes are maintained by one person mostly...If this person gets sick or is fed up by the maintenance...You are in trouble. For pro the best thing is to wait until the distribution becomes mainstream (Ubuntu, Gentoo, etc.)
Wow, really? I actually still primarily use C/C++, so I'm used to explictly scoping objects, meaning that they are all declared on the stack if they are passed to a function. I suppose if you have a language where scoping of objects is done automatically, the compiler needs to be the one to optimize that, and therefore needs clues to how long an object will stay in scope. But I don't really think of that as an optimization of 'inlining' but rather the 'const CObject&' syntax.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
And I'd bet money that I'm far from alone in believing this.
There. Fixed that for you."16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
I normally don't like to post like this but I feel moved have to respond here; people who dismiss C# because of purported Speed/Memory issues have (imho) no idea of how to program in C# properly, or have been fed a crock by people who don't know how to program in C#.
:)
C# is like every other system out there, it has its own ways and means - it can be incredibly efficient and fast, if you use it correctly.
In fairness, even with a poorly skilled coder, a C# program can perform much better then a C++ program written with a similar amount of ineptitude; because of the way that the GC compresses your heap, causing a good chance of L2/L1 cache adjacency.
I'm trying to say that I believe it's harder to write bad C# then it is to write bad C++ etc, etc.
But ok, if you want to dismiss C# just because of standard microsoft vitriol, please - be my guest
But please don't dismiss it because you think it's slow - that's unfair and in the whole, unfounded.
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
Apple has capitalized on that train. Heard OSX?
>C# is like every other system out there, it has its own ways and means - it can be incredibly efficient and fast, if you use it correctly.
Look, the GP said that C# is superior, this isn't even English: I asked superior in what to what?
In memory usage and performance, certainly not superior to C++ on Linux:
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=csharp&lang2=gpp
And as a language, I think that Scala is better designed, that's all.
This doesn't mean that C# is bad, it's probably a good combination for Windows programming due to Microsoft's support, but that's a poor benchmark for 'superiority'!
> "if it succeeds"
.NET on LINUX. It has all the cool features including generics, LINQ, partial classes, extension methods, etc...
It works, now, today. I develop
Check the mono list, there have been several recent "success stories".
Using "Common Sense" is being either to arrogant or to ignorant to ask people who know more about something than you.
GNU's Not Unix.
Here's a better example, http://opensimulator.org/
.NET types work, all of our functionality is plugin-based. Physics engines are plugins. Script engines are plugins. Databases are plugins, even NHibernate is a database plugin. Every piece of functionality is a plugin, mostly.
It's written in C#, and using third party physics libraries and translating LSL for scripting. (We also support other languages in the server as well.) We use Mono and it works just fine. In fact, because of the way
Once you get over the "microsoft is an epic patent troll" shit it's actually a very well designed system, WinForms not withstanding.