Novell announced the second Beta release of Mono: It includes a C# compiler, an implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure and two stacks of APIs: a Unix, Linux, GNOME, Mono stack for APIs that takes the most advantage of your Unix server and desktop and a set of APIs compatible with the Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 that provides support for ASP.NET (web services and web forms), ADO.NET and many other components.
Mono 1.0 Beta 2 Released
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
The monodevlop is in the package! It is great! But the mono’s gtkhtml is not identical with the SuSE’s own gtkhtml package and this package is not in the download section. I found it with the google but IMHO this package (with the source or with the devel package) is can be a very good in the suse’s download section.
Congratulations for Mono team. C# is great language (combines the best things of Java and C++, syntax wise) and it’s even open standard. And Mono brings it for Linux.
For those who’re still wondering when MS will sue Mono team – They won’t: C# is ecma standard. Language is very open, runtime etc implementations are everyone’s own problem. MS would have reason to sue Mono if they’d use their compiler’s source code, but they are not doing that. And did you know, Ximian was asked for director alongside with Microsoft into C# specification group.
Only possible legal problem might be Windows.Forms since MS asks “reasonable price” for using it. This however is not a problem, we have GTK# and QT# is on it’s way. GTK# runs on Windows today so it’s very easy to write software which compiles directly on both operating systems.
Porting software from Windows.Forms for GTK# is also very easy, those two have very little difference *API* wise, code inside is very different tought. I hope and think this will boost software developed for Linux very much since it’s very easy to port between platforms. This is win-win situation: MS gets what they want: .NET for Windows development and Linux gets more applications. Developers get good platform to develop software for both platforms.
Great work. And those who start again whining about Mono and how C# sucks: Don’t use it if you don’t like it. It’s good language with lotsa pros. If you can’t back up your whining in any way, then simply don’t say anything and start useless flamewar.
Go mono
Yeah, that IDE looks quite nice…I can definatly see this taking off with ISV’s as the “VB for linux” (which also offers windows compatability).
This good thing for linux on desktop has been unforseen. Interesting times ahead.
I just hope MS doesnt do something completly anti-competitive…time will tell.
“combines the best things of Java and C++, syntax”
Is that supposed to be good or bad ?
Is it much of the enthusiasm on Mono tied to Asp.Net?
It’s a sincere interest, because a lot of the things that one can do with Mono, one can do with other technologies, be them Java, scripting languages, etc. But Asp.Net, as far as I know, is only possible with .Net. How long it will take until something that matches the easiness of Asp.Net appears?
“Cross-platform-ness” is something that isn’t unique to .Net/Mono.
Ok, Mono has the cool factor and I understand that. But besides that? Ok, thinking hard I may come up with .Net/Mono providing an integration point to diverse systems, but that isn’t very common to the average Joe, and that isn’t unique to .Net/Mono either.
From the point of view of automatically leveraging the libraries written for .Net, I wonder how many of the libraries developers will worry about 1% of the market to at least test their libraries with Mono, not to mention actively supporting Mono and, by consequence, Linux.
What sold you on Mono?
(Bare with my not native English, please.)
C# and parts of .NET are indeed ECMA standards. But ECMA does allow patents and a reasonable royality. There is nothing that prevents Microsoft from sueing Mono because of patent infringement. Also Microsoft could charge a small royality from everyone that uses Mono, which would also be a serious problem because the GPL/LGPL does not allow for that. Maybe there are other reasons why Microsoft cannot sue Mono. If I would be in charge at Microsoft, I would just wait until enough people use Mono and sue them at that time. That would really hurt Linux, which is probably what Microsoft would want.
Can someone who has used both give his/her experience/impression on both projects (portability of code, ease of installtion, ease of use, IDE, etc…)?
Mono, like all projects on which Miguel works is kind of always in the news especially now that Novell is behind them as well and it’s difficult to sort out the technical advantages from the marketing hype.
So thanks in advance for sharing insightful information.
And please avoid astroturfing…
Well, until it gets a gui designer it won’t be a challenger to VB. And since they won’t be integrating glade(unless there has been a change of opinion) then you’ll have to wait for the new gtk+ gui designer. Glade is a piece of shit anyway. Someone please tell me there is a way to turn off MDI, it sucks having to alt-tab through 4 or so windows. At least give the option.
Oh, and be careful with monodevelop and monodoc integration. In the recent past, when monodoc couldn’t find some documentation it would lock up my entire desktop. Maybe a gtk+ 2.4 issue, who knows.
What I would find most interesting is a full-fledged Eclipse plugin that would be on par of what is offered for Java.
are those fedora core 1 packages supposed to work with fc 2? it has some dependencies problems… :/
First of all, Open sourced works are counted as academic r&d work so patents don’t cover opensource software. You cannot sue author of opensource software. You can, however, sue seller of it, patents apply only for commercial actions. That’s why it was removed from Fedora etc, in the future it would prevent selling RHEL or even Fedora Cd’s. See the difference?
And from Mono faq: “Microsoft is interested in other implementations of .NET and are willing to help make the ECMA spec more accurate for this purpose.”
Ximian is also part of C# ecma committee. So with your logic, they can also sue Microsoft.
addition: “That’s why it was removed”.. meant mp3 support was removed because of that
Does anyone know if the Windows compiled version runs on Win98 yet (yep…people still use this)? There has been a problem with the installer complaining that it can’t find some nt*.dll files.
Cheers,
John
I’m trying to start-up a dutch go-mono forum. If anyone is interested please let me know!
You are either woefully, woefully, ignorant or willfully misleading.
There is no get-out-of-jail free card for Open Source software and patents. That is so mind numbingly ignorant I wonder why you are even interested in Mono.
Too many folks have addressed the grave problems software patents present to Open Source software (FSF, ESR, Perens, Torvalds, KDE project, etc, etc.) to know how on earth you could have cooked up such a ridiculous view.
Software patents and FOSS software are *fundamentally incompatible.*
Educate yourself, th.
Software patents and FOSS software are *fundamentally incompatible.*
I agree. And who say: I use Python, Perl, etc and nobody can sue with patents can be in wrong. Who know what patents of Microsoft or other big company useable oppositely with any GNU software? Software patents are fundamentally the root of the hell.
There is no get-out-of-jail free card for Open Source software and patents. That is so mind numbingly ignorant I wonder why you are even interested in Mono.
Take some time to read software patents. Mind you, it’s hard to find *any* software (closed or open source) that doesn’t infringe any patent.
Software patents and FOSS software are *fundamentally incompatible.*
But the current situation makes that separation impossible. Just look here:
http://webshop.ffii.org/
Wow. It’s like deja vu all over again.
Whenever Mono comes up on this forum, the Mono apologists come out of the woodwork in full-force at 3.0e8 m/s. “th” even got 2nd post!
Please see the last .Net/Mono/C# thread here on osnews for all the discussion on
– why Mono is bad for the Free software community,
– why MS patents will be a huge problem for anyone using Mono down the road,
– why Java + GCJ/Classpath is a possible alternative (yes, patent issues considered),
– why Python won’t cut it (debatable), and
– the differences between DotGNU and Mono (though it’s also appropriate in this thread)
While I wish you very right, you are completely wrong here. A company that holds a patent can sue anyone who infrings their patents. Why do you thing, the FSF is fighting against software patents in Europe. Software patents are the biggest thread to open source software, there is.
And Microsoft saying that they like other implementations of .NET will certainly not stop them from sueing Mono developers/users if they see Mono as a real thread. And Ximian being part of ECMA C# does not help anything because Microsoft holds the patents for .NET and they can sue anyone infringing their patents whether they are participating at ECMA or not.
Software patents are a very serious problem for open-projects.
resistence is futile mono and .NET in general will conquer
linux desktop
I find it interesting how when anyone refers to Microsoft doing something to protect its business interests they are called being uncompetitive. People should really learn some economics.
http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/cic_text/misc/antitrust/antitrus.htm“>…
Protecting your ‘business interests’ is not a sufficient defense for anticompetitive practices. See: illegal.
Uh, you know, Microsoft, the convicted monopolist?!
>are those fedora core 1 packages supposed to work with fc 2? it has some dependencies problems… :/
Yes – I just finished upgrading (rpm -Uvh *.rpm) and it worked just fine from my fedora 2 box.
Are you sure, there is not any microsoft or other company’s patent can sue GNU classpath or Python ? You ever see every software patent and every lines of code the GNU java compiler, classpath and Python ?
resistence is futile mono and .NET in general will conquer
linux desktop
And when that day comes i think MS will start fighting back with his lawyers to stop mono from succed.
Or I think MS.NET will be incompatible with Mono or DotGNU. Remember Java ?
It’s not the same use any piece of software that has been patented than to use al Whole plataform that IS patented.
The difference between Mono supporters and Mono doomsayers: Both know that Microsoft is categorically uncompetitive and anti-Linux, but supporters focus on Mono’s legal rights while doomsayers look at Microsoft’s past behaviour, concluding that they have the desire and legal standing to destroy Mono.
the Mono team seems confident that their implentation (particularly the parts needed to produce a complete Linux development platform) is legally safe but the vagaries surrounding Mono / .Net are enough to scare off big-business.
In most ways this is comparing apples to oranges, but it wasn’t that long ago that many were concerned that the GPL would not hold up in court. Hoping some legal support (provided by Novell etc.) will clear the legality of Mono.
Please see the last .Net/Mono/C# thread here on osnews for all the discussion on
– why Mono is bad for the Free software community,
– why MS patents will be a huge problem for anyone using Mono down the road,
– why Java + GCJ/Classpath is a possible alternative (yes, patent issues considered),
– why Python won’t cut it (debatable), and
– the differences between DotGNU and Mono (though it’s also appropriate in this thread)
Ha. OSnews discussions are as far away from ‘definitive’ as you can get. We’ve been over this before, Java is also encumbered by patents. You simply like Sun more than MS. Java is NOT an alternative to Mono. It does not handle more than one langauge, and Java is simply not anywhere near as good as C# as a language anyways.
If the patent thing can be cleared up, I and others feel that .NET will be a great help to both open source software and software in general. Consider your post counter opinioned.
In his defense, he may be speaking of patent law in his country, which may be very different in it’s details from patent law we are familar with in our respective countries.
I dunno about the whole C#, .NET patent issues…there is so much prior art (prior languages that implement the same programming methodologies, SOAP, ODBC, xml-rpc, etc. for ,NET) in both those technologies that I am not sure the patent(s) for these MS concoctions would stand in court.
I myself would be careful about investing in Mono without a back-up plan (GNU portable.NET ?) but I would still invest in Mono…it is a great piece of work.
If your on the rawhide bandwagon be very careful with those mono packages. I am going to be building some new ones for my comps since these are built against a gtkhtml3 version that is older and it will go boom in the night if you try to force it.
When you say Economics, what do you mean? Which school? Anyway if you follow the standard basic western ideal of absolute competition, promoted by lowering barriers to entry whereever possible, improving information available to consumers so they make rational choices, promoting the creation of substitutes, etc, etc.
Then I think it is safe to say that in that world: –
A. The consumer gets all the surplus (I am sure you know what I mean).
B. Everything tends towards being a commodity.
So basically “steps” taken by Microsoft to protect its super normal profits, in a MATURE industry, just would not work, read futile. Because there would be low barriers to entry and easy substitution.
Anyway Microsoft taking steps to protect its business has, like, nothing to do with economics, but with business strategy.
Without software patents, the only software available would be open source. Without commercial software for OSS to copy, we’d be stuck with crappy software because there would be no incentive to make it better. And no, you can’t make money off OSS if all software is OSS.
c# is the best OO language that i ever seen and mono
technology is ok for my work on linux.
im not interested to deploy web apps (asp.net) or windows
applications (bleah) so the patent problems for me and
other mono supporters do not exist.
Without software patents, the only software available would be open source.
W00t?
Without commercial software for OSS to copy, we’d be stuck with crappy software because there would be no incentive to make it better.
Why?
Ever heard of Emacs, Apache, etc? AFAIK they never needed to copy anyone to be good, they evolved because their users needed improvements and new funcionality.
And no, you can’t make money off OSS if all software is OSS.
Again, why?
So companies like RH or SUSE just make money because there’s people using Windows instead of their products? Strange logic.
For sheer amount and quality of code you have to hand it to the mono crowd – they’ve delivered a complete toolkit in a comparatively short period of time.
Perl 6 by comparison is still in the pre-pre-alpha (if you can even claim) stages after the same amount of time since inception.
Quote:
“Perl 6 by comparison is still in the pre-pre-alpha (if you can even claim) stages after the same amount of time since inception.”
I agree mono is a best open source project for 2004.
Hello, we’re posted new packages.
Fedora Core 2 packages will be available tomorrow, or by the end of the week.
For those on SuSE 9.1 who can’t find the libgtkhtml package, it’s now listed on the package download page.
Well, that’s not apples to apples.
Mono didn’t have to design anything. They’re just implementing someone else’s work. By comparison, Parrot is a ground-up creation. They have to make choices for how to do things, why to do things, what things should and shouldn’t be done, APIs for how to do things, etc.. The EMCA specs and the whole .Net platform are a result of what, at least 5, 6 years of work by one of the largest corperations on earth? They just came along and made another implementation.
So of course Mono would be farther along then Parrot. It’s design was already finished by a cash-rich company, and all it had to do was brute-force coding that anyone can do. It’s the design questions that take time.
I believe Microsoft implement .NET ECMA standard because they intend to fight with Java and rules the world with dotnet. MS want others also implement dotnet like mono & dotGNU did and attract more developer to use .net no matter it be based on mono or ms .net, so that more developer will jump into .net bandwagon until Java will not have the air to breath. They do not intend to crush mono because they know that they always a step ahead and indirectly mono also help them to suceed. So as a conclusion developer/user like us will gain more benefits with better platform like dotnet/mono did.
By the way, while you’re all dabating, I’m actually creating something useful with mono.
If it offers RAD, they will come.
PS: sorry for the field of dreams line.
“So of course Mono would be farther along then Parrot. It’s design was already finished by a cash-rich company, and all it had to do was brute-force coding that anyone can do. It’s the design questions that take time.”
its pretty hard actually considering how much windows forms is tied up to the windows architecture and other stuff like gtk# but certainly parrot is going to take more time. they are doing some cool things too and not funded by a multi billion company. they are not comparable as of now