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Mono 2.0 and .NET On Linux
Several readers noted the release of Mono 2.0, which is compatible with Microsoft's .NET Framework 2.0. According to Miguel de Icaza, "... users can move over server applications built for .NET and client applications built with Windows Forms." InternetNews points out that only about half of the .NET apps out there will work on Mono 2.0, for a variety of reasons including (but not limited to) legacy Windows-only libraries and Microsoft's progress on .NET 3.0 and 3.5 APIs.
I like Mono, I really do, however it's always playing catch-up, it's by it's very nature it's always going to be one step behind Microsoft. Without the support of features in .Net 3.5, very few people are going to choose it for new developments.
Most of it anyway; but crucially, LINQ.
The bits missing (Windows Workflow Foundation, Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Presentation Foundation) aren't as crucial in my personal opinion; they are just nice toys you aren't going to miss if you've never had them before.
LINQ however is a killer feature IMO; I'm glad to see that's now available on mono.
throw new NoSignatureException();
"A question: Is there a functional IDE for Mono, for us who don't want gnome or even gnome libs on our System?"
Um, what? You'll get gnome cooties?
Monodevelop is a good IDE, and I don't think having GTK and related libs installed is going to steal your masculinity or anything.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Except that C# is a decent little language? It's good to see it open-source, that way it can have a life after Microsoft tires of it.
I don't want to run my stuff on Microsoft technologies but I have potential (and actual) customers who already do use them.
In order to integrate their application and ours we needed to code a little plugin to run on their ASP.NET (or whatever the correct name is) servers.
Mono allowed me to develop the required plugin on a Ubuntu box. (They then wanted the resulting assembly signed, we gave them the source code so they could do it themselves).
Microsoft was relevant to us because we had a potential customer who used it and isn't about to abandon their entire existing system just for us.
Without Mono there would have been two options: .NET
a) Pony up to MS to develop in
b) Don't do the business.
neither of which are particularly appealing.
Mono allows competition and competition is good.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Yeah, it's a bitch trying to develop .net apps on my Amiga. I wish developers would stop assuming I'm using a Linux distro with features. Assholes.
How we know is more important than what we know.
There's a big difference between the two - because devs don't target WINE, WINE is the "embrace" part of moving from Windows. Because devs target .NET, .NET is the "embrace" part of moving from Linux.
So, these two technologies are actually on opposing sides of this particular ideological fence - one is an attempt at removing lock-in, the other is an attempt at locking-in.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
You're not making much sense. Yes, people don't target WINE, they target the Windows API, just like they target the .NET API. Wine is a means of running Windows code on linux, Mono is a means of running .NET code on linux. People will be writing code for both, so might as well support running it on linux.
Download winetricks then run:
sh winetricks dotnet11 dotnet20
Bingo. .NET under wine.
Before I tear apart what you think passes for an argument, let me say that the Mono folks are doing an amazing job and they get way too little credit. The tinfoil hat brigade around here seems to have taken on Mono as its personal whipping boy, and it's totally unfair and uncalled for.
Sure, but weren't you supposed to be talking about Mono there somewhere? Java used to provide lock-in, too. Hence, the GNU Classpath project, which is pretty much identical in its goals to Mono. Funny that I never saw you people screaming about that one being a trap.
Wow, get some perspective there. How many killer apps are there on Linux that the Windows people are craving? KDE? Gnome? Firefox? OpenOffice? None of those are on .NET and most of them run on Windows, anyway. Do you think that Firefox, OOo and KDE are all helping people move away from Linux by providing Windows ports? Isn't it more likely that without those Windows ports, most of these projects would go nowhere?
It's really quite obvious to anyone with any actual knowledge of how the industry works that people are going to write applications without Linux in mind. The Mono project, just like the Wine project, lets people who run Linux run applications that other people wrote for Windows.
As it turns out, there's also a bunch of useful libraries that Mono includes that you can use when coding for platforms other than Windows. It boggles my mind that anyone would think that this is somehow a trap. It's just a useful way to access Unixy things on Mono. But it clearly can't be breaking Linux lock-in or whatever pea-brained scheme you've come up with.
.NET has been around for 7-8 years now. Do you honestly think code can't become legacy in that amount of time? Here's a tip: if you think Linux has any lock-in potential for applications written on it, then perhaps you shouldn't talk too much about intellectual integrity.
All the budding developers who hear about .NET's cross-platform nature will want to learn it. All, except the wisest, of them will be forced to learn MS .NET from MSDN. They'll code a few .NET applications in C#, test them on M$ Windows and let their brains embrace .NET beyond all question. One day they find that most of their applications don't work on Linux/Mono. They'll scream on all public forums - "Linux is crap!!!". Someone tries to explain to them that the problem is because of their heavy usage of M$-specific extensions which are not part of ECMA .NET. Then they'll scream again - "ECMA .NET?#??!!#! WTF is that?". Such is the depth of lock-in involved with .NET.
The largest prime factor of my UID is 263267.