Sure, everyone knows Tomboy, F-spot, Beagle, MonoDevelop, Muine, Blam! or Monodoc. But there are a lot of other interesting Mono/GTK# applications out there that need your attention. Join us for a quick listing of the not-so-well-known GTK# apps and you will witness yourself that the platform is flourishing.(I mostly link to their GnomeFiles.org pages because it’s easier for me to extract URLs from its database — saves me time putting this article together).
SportsTracker – An application for recording sporting activities.
PolarViewer – Viewer application for exercise files recorded with Polar heartrate monitors.
Bless – Hex Editor written in Gtk#
Galaxium Messenger – Instant Messenger for GNOME using the MSN service.
MooTag – MP3 and Ogg Vorbis tag editor for GNOME Desktop
GIB – Tool for building GNOME compliant icon themes.
Bluefunk – Bluefunk is a music player for the Gnome desktop.
CDCollect – CDCollect is a CD catalog application for gnome. It’s goal is to be able to catalog your entire CD collection allowing for searches of your CD files with a clean and simple interface.
Chicken Framework – Useful .Net components for your application.
CSBoard – CSBoard is a small GUI for gnuchess.
DiaCanvas# – DiaCanvas# is a Mono binding for the popular DiaCanvas2
FastOpen – gnome-panel run dialog replacement
fewnn – fewnn is a frontend for different game emulators (such as xmame and tuxnes).
GCursor# – A simple application to change the cursor in X (written in GTK#).
GFax – The GFAX project aims to provide a free front end to the various facsimile programs available.
Gimp# – Gimp# is a C# wrapper around the GIMP API.
gTVListings – TV listings management program
iBookshelf – iBookshelf is an application for cataloging your book collection and designing bookshelves based on this data.
Indexator.NET – File indexer written in C# (mono). Can be used as a CD Cataloguer and gives facilties to consult data via console, graphic application and web.
Jumpnbumpmenu – Frontend to Jump ‘n Bump
Kurush – Kurush aims to be an easy to use personal finance tool for the GNOME Desktop.
MonkeyPop – Chicken Framework client.
Tomboy Reminder Plugin – This plugin allows tomboy to show reminder popups at specified date in a tomboy note.
MonoUML – MonoUML. CASE tool for mono.
MVideo – MVideo is an advanced manager for your film collection.
NPlot – NPlot is a free charting library for .NET and supports various kinds of graphic modes.
opengl-sharp – C# binding for OpenGL including Gtk# OpenGL widget.
Scratchpad – Spatial text editor for the GNOME desktop
SkyNET – A simple skychart program for mono
Sonance – GNOME audio player based on GStreamer and Mono.
TerrarSharp – A small gtk-sharp/mono program to keep you updated with the current terror alert level.
WebNotes – Gnome Personal Wiki frontend (didiwiki).
WoodPusher – WoodPusher is a chess application written in C# for the Mono framework.
glyrics is a lyrics displayer and finder.
GSDict is GTK#-based frontend for SDict dictionary.
FileSync – File and directory synchronizing software
Edit# – Editor developed with GTK#
Sussen is a tool for testing the security posture of computers and other network devices.
GPuzzle – Simple puzzle based on Sam Loyd 14-15 game
Gnome Personal Web Sharing – A neat little application that lets you share your files over the web quickly and with no hassle.
mcatalog – An application for catalogue things like films and books.
Spam Trainer – Train your spam filter (e.g. Spambayes/SpamAssassin) via drag-n-drop in GNOME.
Conway’s Game of Life – Conway’s cellular automaton Game of Life.
Muine Applet – a GNOME panel applet for controlling Muine.
Monotheka – A DivX/XviD/DVD movie database for film buffs & collectors.
And there are more, out there, waiting to be used:
portage-sharp – portage-sharp is a gtk frontend for the Gentoo portage system
XBGM# is a free Xbox Game Manager.
C# Studio is a simple IDE for a C#/Mono/GTK# developer
GtkSharpRSS – A RSS and RDF client
GraphMonkey – graphic calculator. It uses a simple interface to draw curves.
Simplicity – A light-weight C# editor for Mono using Gtk#
Tam (Track Attribute Manager) jukebox is a system that randomly picks songs to play
SharpMusic is a client for the Music Player Daemon that tries to join the power of MPD with the visual appel of the Muine Music Player.
Gnosmirc – GNOme SMart IRc Client
Burro is an open source project with the goal of developing a cross-platform frontend to the mldonkey core.
RAF converter is a C/Gtk# program that opens, optimizes (gamma,saturation,sharpness, whitebalance, noice etc) and converts RAF files (Raw image files from FujiFilm Finepix s5000/s7000 digicams).
MediaNET is a Gtk# based free software content manager which allows anybody to find easily the media he wants to see/hear
Flash Card Recover
gMeshwork – a Linux meshwork client
If you know of more active GTK# projects, leave a comment and a URL on our comment section.
is there a friendly installer for mono and GTK for non-devs (ordinary users only)? something like the .NET framework redistributable, only this one’s for non-Win OS?
in the end it’s not gonna be a selling point to say that “hey this app is written in Mono.” we all know that C# makes it lots easier to do apps compared to C/C++. the selling point will become how easy it is to install apps so that it will become a non-issue as to whether an app is written using Java, Mono or good ol C/C++.
*cough*portage*cough* *cough*apt-get*cough*
It would be nice if BitRock makes their installer free for Mono usage (instead of “personal usage”, they could do it for “mono usage”).
They have created a mono-bundle btw, and it’s great, have a look: http://www.go-mono.com/archive/1.0.6/installer/monobundle-1.0.6-ins… (make the .bin file executable and then run it to install the latest Mono on your Linux).
I use the popular ones but I’m impressed with the list.
Autopackage could be the free software equivalent of bitrock
anyone got paint.net working under Mono? (www.eecs.wsu.edu/paint.net) The latest Mono release had a beta implementation of Windows.Forms so it should work right? 🙂
This is actualy a significant app. If Novell could port that app to GTK# and use it as their “easy-to-install-and-run demo of mono” kind of thing, would be great for all of us.
> Sure, everyone knows Tomboy, F-spot, Beagle, MonoDevelop, Muine, Blam! or Monodoc.
No, sorry to disappoint you. Most not even by name.
Paint.NET is everything else than a significant app. It looks nice but is not very useable.
@Eugenia have you tested it?
No, but I heard a lot about it.
While having an installer would be a worthy addition, I think one of the strong points of Mono is how it is just like any other package on your system and not some platform you have to babysit or give special treatment to *cough* java *cough*.
The goal should be that the user decides he wants to install, say, beagle. The distro then downloads beagle and any supporting libraries, of which Mono may be one. At no point should the user be plastered with “Hey, this runs on Mono!!1” messages. The actual delivery mechanism is yum, portage, apt-get etc. as any other application. Then you run “beagle” or click the pretty icon, and hey, it works. If Mono shows through the cracks, the packagers have failed.
It doesn’t quite work like that on all distributions at the moment, but as we get more popular Mono applications the pressure will build on the distributors. Beagle in particular may be a killer app sometime in the near future (when it doesn’t require kernel patches).
I agree with Tobias: Paint.NET is unusable: i tried on windows and worked awfully: opening a medium sized image and tryin to work on it (resizing/crop/rotating stuff like that) was slow as hell. Doing the same job with free Irfanview viewer took only a fraction of second.
Talkin more generally about Mono project, have you read the dissertation of this “Gnome guy” here: http://www.gnome.org/~seth/blog/mono ?
I think it’s a slightly paranoid view but some of his ideas/fears are not so absurd…
i.e. MonoUML has site on sourceforge.net but tries to host images on geocities so:
“Sorry, this site is temporarily unavailable!
The web site you are trying to access has exceeded its allocated data transfer. Visit our help area for more information.”
Ever heard of imageshack.us?
Seth Nickel actually understands a lot though. RedHat keeps on poo-pooing Mono and Novell gets the competitive advantage and eventually RedHat caves.
Mono is not getting into Gnome anytime soon, but it’ll just become a defacto Gnome install just because of the sheer number of apps written in it.
*advertising for your other sites* *cough* *cough*
So where is Java in all of this? In terms of sheer numbers of apps written for Java, the FLOSS Linux world hardly went nuts implementing that specification. Ok, so in many ways Sun screwed up by not making Java an ISO/ECMA standard. -Mono has shot outthe gate relativly close to the launch of .NET itself which has been has been interesting, but why would red hat feel any more obliged to ship Mono just because of the “sheer” number of apps?
Is the ball in Sun’s court?
Being an ECMA standard doesn’t actually guarantee much at all. It only provides a standard which, in its current form, can be freely implemented by third parties like mono. In light of future developments, however, it doesn’t guarantee anything. The extensions made to this standard can and most likely WILL contain patented technology.
This means that if mono wants to keep up with .net on the long run, they’ll have to start paying royalties to Microsoft.
Seth Nickel actually understands a lot though. RedHat keeps on poo-pooing Mono and Novell gets the competitive advantage and eventually RedHat caves.
Mono is not getting into Gnome anytime soon, but it’ll just become a defacto Gnome install just because of the sheer number of apps written in it.
>
>
Don’t bet on it. There’s nothing written that’s using Mono that can’t be found written using C,C++ or any other language.
mono application :
http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~nowozin/autopano-sift/
While SharpNES 0.2 isn’t yet a GTK# application, 0.3 will be.
SharpNES is a Nintendo emulator written in C#/SDL for the Mono platform.
Check it out at http://jturner.tapetrade.net/sharpnes/ and also on Novell Forge.
Blah, so MS can develop new stuff and patent it. Tell us something new, please.
And this speaks against mono exactly how? It doesn’t. It only would under the false and often refuted assumption that the sole purpose of mono is playing catch up to whatever MS decides to do.
So what exactly are you trying to tell us?
Java doesn’t integrate nicely with Gtk, hence does not fit in well with a Gnome desktop. There is java bindings for Gnome, but afaik they do not link Java AWT/Swing apps into Gtk but instead provide an alternative toolkit to AWT/Swing. There are not many Java/Gtk apps out there and Java/AWT/Swing apps don’t integrate nicely into the Gnome desktop. Mono is focused on Gtk/Gnome but Java isn’t and never will get the traction Mono now has on the Gtk/Gnome desktop. If the ball is in Sun’s court, they’ve forgotten to hit it back for quite some time.
SWT has a GTK2 binding. Using this Java apps integrate nicely into the Gnome look&feel.
Carsten
http://forge.novell.com/modules/xfmod/project/?monotheka
and
http://forge.novell.com/modules/xfmod/project/?gmp
“Being an ECMA standard doesn’t actually guarantee much at all.”
Actually it does. By submitting the specification to ECMA, Microsoft was obliged to give-up patent protection enforcement.
windows.forms however, is another matter, and one that would mean .NET compatibility with Mono.
If you look at the mono binary downloads list there are no Solaris binaries. Surely there needs to be a prebuilt version for enterprise customers if the Mono team want to be known as more than a desktop hobyist project ?
It would be great to get mono up and running on the 8CPU/16GB RAM sparc box I use.
Neil
For the java question, Just check the swing and swt sighings..
http://java.sun.com/products/jfc/tsc/sightings/
http://www.oneclipse.com/Members/admin/news/swt-sightings
Especially after java 5 the desktop applications are getting better in java. And, they are REAL cross platform. Not only GNome..
i am not counting the countless libraries which do not have user interface.
> Actually it does. By submitting the specification to ECMA,
> Microsoft was obliged to give-up patent protection enforcement.
Actually, that’s not strickly correct. They’re obliged to license any patents covered by the ECMA under “reasonable and undiscriminating” license terms. Here are some possible example that fit the bill but would not be compatible with open source: “Anyone who uses a CLR app must pay a one-time fee of 1 penny once in their lifetime.”
At least Eclipse GTK+ version does *not* integrate nicely with gnome. Just try it with a dark theme. Most of the widgets in Eclipse ar not visible because of hardcoded dark colors. That hurts, because i really enjoy my black visual theme in gnome. I don’t really know if it is problem with Eclipse or SWT, but here’s one example where SWT app doesn’t integrate with gnome
Hello, I belong to the MonoUML team.
Answering to the question in the subject: MonoUML isn’t mature. In fact, we haven’t yet released any version; however, you (and everyone) is invited to try it and give your feedback, and even joining the project.
We have two members working on a new design for the core GUI module, called umlcanvas#. The implementation of this new architecture should begin this week. On the other hand, model manipulation through the properties tab is quite usable.
> Ever heard of imageshack.us?
Not ’till now. I’ll let Mario (MonoUML founder) know about it. Thanks for the tip.
Sorry if my post seems a bit “rude” and good luck for your project
Why isn’t there any news of Mono use in QT and KDE apps? Is Mono being developed strictly for the purpose of GTK and Gnome?
I haven’t looked at the list of programs yet so if some QT or KDE apps are listed then I am speaking a bit out of line.
Wait, did I hear someone mention java as cross platform? Write once, run anywhere? Sun themselves can tell you that is a big load of BS. It’ll still be marketed as that because management types won’t see past their little facade and it’s the only real thing they can market on as java itself has little to offer.
I can hear the anti-MS camp clicking on the report abuse button already!
“Wait, did I hear someone mention java as cross platform? Write once, run anywhere? Sun themselves can tell you that is a big load of BS.”
I haven’t had trouble running java apps developed on Windows on either Linux or OS X. If Sun says java cross-platform ease is BS, please post a link.
As far as I know, java cross-platform problems were ironed out years ago, and there’s a vast test suite java goes through to ensure that remains the case.
The .Net bindings for KDE und QT aren’t quite finished yet… But they should be ready by KDE 3.4
java is most definitely cross platform. I tried running 2 year old java code, that was developed and tested windows only in Fedora Core with no problems.
You can, of course, write windows only programs if you try, by , for example using c:/ without thinking of unix filesystems, but you have to really try.
If you allow me to rant a little, Mono as Java as all these nice cross-platform projects failed on one point… so far none work on 64bits !! Of course, part of it works, one app here, one app there… but the whole idea of easy to use program on every platform is just hype so far.
So of course i just have to wait for the Mono/Java to be ported to 64bits… well I am still waiting. So far, chat written in Java stable in Windows/crash in Linux, part of Mono does not build in 64bits, so Muine cannot be build. So for final user (me), 2 tests = 2 failures.
Mono does build and run on 64 bits, you must not have
read the release notes.
Go fetch Mono 1.1.4 (our recommended runtime) and compile
and run on Linux/AMD64 or Solaris/SPARCv9
Miguel.
Yes, it would be possible to create an autopackage of Mono and also Mono apps, that way if you tried to install say F-Spot and Mono was not available, autopackage could resolve that dependency transparently for any user.
So far nobody has stepped up to produce one. One issue that would be nice to resolve is using ELFTLS at runtime so all users get the performance boost.
Otherwise to be honest I think it’d be OK to ship an autopackage that depends on ELFTLS. It’s been available since Red Hat 9, and I think it’s alright to require a modern distribution to run Mono.
Regarding the discussion of the usefulness of Paint.NET:
While testing some custom virtual memory management code (working with multiple gigabyte datasets that exceed MS Windows’ capabilities) I was trying to find some way to fill up a major portion of my system memory. A coworker suggested creating a huge image, so I fired up the gimp. No matter how big of an image I created it just didn’t fill up my system memory. Fired up Paint.NET and quickly succeeded in using up 95% of my 2 GB + swap. 🙂
Paint.NET uses alot of GDI and has some win32 native code in there. I’ve always been interested in porting it to mono, but it would be a huge task as most of the drawing would have to be rewritten.
I think it would be better to focus on the .NET version and try to fix those memory management problems, then (maybe) try to port it
@Sphinx: you shouldnt say “ecio is right”
the link i provided wasnt about my thoughts but about seth’s ones. As I’ve alread said, even though some of his ideas are interesting, i think it’s a bit too much on the FUD side of the moon 
Hello,
Our goal is to run Paint.NET out of the box with Mono
once our System.Windows.Forms code is completed, it should
not be too difficult (I heard that someone on the #mono
channel had already removed the P/Invokes and the third
party controls, jhill maybe?)
Anyways, you can use System.Drawing with Gtk# if you
are ever interested in doing a native Gtk# port, but for
now we think that Paint.NET will be a great test case for
our Winforms/Sysdrawing implementations.
As for the memory usage: the GIMP actually uses a memory
manager that uses an on-disk representation of the images
to cap the memory used by the system. You can probably
turn this off and consume all available memory.
Miguel.
I wasn’t aware that there was any outside work being done to remove the P/Invokes. That’s excellent news. What’s the time-frame on System.Windows.Forms being completed?
There is already 64 bit java platforms available for Linux, Windows (beta) and Solaris.
so far GUI (i.e. Windows.Forms) for windows,
and a console-downloader for the Mono. (working).
A Gtk# GUI is comming up in the next days.
ps. you should use NAnt to build the binaries
sorry, I forgot the link
sharpdilbert.sourceforge.net
These apps make me think that Mono is used as a wrapper around existing code, much like TCL/Tk can be used to provide a user interface to existing tools.
Several issues:
– Mono is not a proven platform for large scale apps. It may become one but it’s not that yet.
– C# and .Net are owned by Microsoft, the king of the proprietary world. Yes I know some bits are standardised with the ECEA, just like HTML is standardized, but IE is not compliant to that standard and has proprietary extensions, which makes the ECEA argument totally irrelevant in the 4th dimension.
Also Mono is like Ubuntu: less important in reality than the amount of PR we get would like us to think.
Mono is also a tool to make GUIs on Linux confusing for non technical managers, who will prefer the simplicity of the Windows model: 1 interface; 0 decision.
Instead of fragmenting the GUI Linux market and reinventing the wheel once again, I would prefer to see some consolidation… Bye Mono.
Well then… I guess we should all do as you please and stop developping using Mono. I mean, we liked to play with it, and some of us even made really interesting apps, but hey, looking at how you give definitive judgements about the fact that Mono is not a solution, we must open our eyes to the real world (that only you can make us see) and throw Mono away, don’t we ?
Oh, and, thanks, I’ll also uninstall my Ubuntu.
I suppose that since I should listen to people that KNOW what’s good for me, I should just be happy with a windows box ?
http://www.improve-technologies.com/alpha/esharp/“