Mono Project Releases Beta 1 414
AArnott writes "Ximian has just released beta 1 of its open-source implementation of Microsoft .NET platform. Mono allows .NET applications to run on Linux, Mac OS X, Unix, Windows. Mono 1.0 is slated for release on June 30, 2004."
sjanes71 adds "The first 'beta' always gets heaps of attention, and this is the first of three planned for the Mono project. Some of the new features touted for this release that updates Mono v0.31 include a faster interpreter, a global assembly cache, support for the StrongARM and HPPA platforms, generics support in the VM and C# compiler and an early alpha of System.Windows.Forms. C# and .NET is Microsoft's answer to Sun Microsystem's Java platform and Project Mono aims to create the Open Source, cross-platform version of Microsoft's new development environment."
First of three Betas? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:First of three Betas? (Score:4, Funny)
I'm assuming that for those with a knowledge of physics or electronics or car racing or something, that is totally hilarious... so I'd better laugh so as to fit in...
ROFL! Nice one!
Re:First of three Betas? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Awesome, beta 1 of Mono (Score:3, Insightful)
10 Bitch about something Microsoft did.
20 Clone it like hypocrites.
30 Goto 10.
You're forgetting that the people who "clone" and the people who bitch are usually not the same persons.
Well done guys! (Score:5, Insightful)
We need interoprability with everything else to keep LINUX viable.
Re:Well done guys! (Score:2)
We should not. We should strive not merely to be merely interoperable, but to be ahead of everything else -- we should have something unique, innovative -- a killer app proper.
Hm. Should stay away from marketing department.
In any case, one does not need interoperability to be viable. The Mac is not very interoperable with x86 or Windows -- only a few doubt that it is viable -- because, the Mac has unique features that other systems do not have. (
Re:Well done guys! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well done guys! (Score:4, Insightful)
Mac is completely interoperable with windows & *nix where it counts. If it wasn't it would not exist.
Interoperability is the reason mac survives. It is also the reason linux is viable.
Create a niche and that's all you will exist in.
Work like this is what keeps linux viable. The vision shown by Ximian is great - this sort of innovation displays the strength of alternative software development.
Now if only they can make some $$$
Re:Well done guys! (Score:4, Insightful)
Where it counts. Right. Like running the same executables. Reading the same file formats is nowhere near the order of interoperability that the grandparent post was talking about -- running the same executables.
You do realise that the Mac has long since carved a niche for itself and filled it?
While Ximian has done some innovative things, we're talking about Mono here, which is fundamentally a copy, an alternative implementation of
If there is one thing Mono has done, is to have ported, to have made available Microsoft "innovation" to other platforms. But it's no excuse for not working on new ideas.
But back to Linux. If all we ever do is copy, what will distinguish us from them? An equally balanced alternative is not good enough -- we must outweigh them as a operating system, as a development environment, as a computing platform.
However, I don't mind Linux being a niche player for a few more years. I don't really care for more installed base nor for more marketshare. If it is a side effect of improvements made, so be it.
Re:Well done guys! (Score:5, Interesting)
If all they did was cloning, of course the best they could ever hope for was barely keeping up.
This means that if Microsoft torpedoes the
Note whose APIs Ximian is writing their apps to... they aren't Microsoft's...
I used to think Miguel was naive. Now I think he's a really shrewd bastard... They got Microsoft's support and then pulled an "embrace and extend" on MICROSOFT.
Re:Well done guys! (Score:5, Insightful)
Mono and dotGNU guys are trying to take the wind out of Microsoft's sails for what could become a ubiquitous platform for developement (at least on windows).
Had opensource developers done this for Java we wouldn't need Sun's stewardship (being a coporation they did a fine job in that role, so no complains from me!).
Re:Well done guys! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? Well, I dunno. Maybe to appease the Monopoly watchdogs. Maybe to bury Sun (I picked C# over Java and haven't been let down yet). And maybe -- just maybe -- to make it easy to use Microsoft products on alternative hardware and alternative Operating Systems without Microsoft having to worry about supporting all the obscure Linux builds of the world.
Incidentally...I too like Sun's stewardship, but it existed despite a big clean room open source intiative [kaffe.org] to reproduce Java. I remember playing around with it in college to compile somebody else's object code into native code for faster execution (our mainframe was slowwwww and at the time, running Java was like a snail on a turtle's back).
Re:Well done guys! (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, no ... at least in the case of Mono, it was written because Miguel de Icaza and the Ximian guys like .Net. They want to use it to develop their own software. They're not too concerned with what Microsoft plans to do with it. If Microsoft abandoned C# and .Net tomorrow, Miguel would probably be really, really puzzled ... and keep on working
generics compiler 'gmcs' as opposed to? (Score:2, Informative)
The generics compiler is called `gmcs' as opposed to the standard 1.0 compiler `gmcs'.
I assume this is a typo.. or I am working too hard.
As I am reading
Re:generics compiler 'gmcs' as opposed to? (Score:3, Informative)
Good news (Score:5, Interesting)
To me, to
Re:Good news (Score:3, Insightful)
wrong (Score:3, Informative)
it is MUCH better than visual studio (which is neither innovative nor brilliant)
Re:Good news (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong [microsoft.com]:
The Microsoft®
Re:Good news (Score:3, Insightful)
(Incidentally, in a company with as many employees as Microsoft, there's bound to be a number of really great ideas that sneak through the layers of paralyzing marketing like background radiation escaping fr
Try SharpDevelop (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Try SharpDevelop (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Good news (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good news (Score:3, Interesting)
but [.net] is also way easier to use
Just out of curiousity, in what way? (I presume you mean .NET without vs.net)
I've only ever used .net with with Visual Studio, and that was pretty easy, but without the IDE I'm curious as to how it is easier than Java (disclaimer: lots more experience with Java than .net)
One improvement I (totally subjective) noticed with .net was speed - ASP.net apps seemed a lot "snappier" than JSP/servlet apps.
Re:Good news (Score:3, Interesting)
We ran into this same issue. However, we were comparing Servlet/JSP/J2EE running on Slowaris with dog slow Sparc processors, while .Net ran on dual 3GHz Xeons with HT, 2GB Ram, SCSI, etc using Windows 2003. We switched Servlet/JSP/J2EE to the same piece of hardware using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0 and Oracle 9iAS as the J2EE server and the numbers were about equal across the
Re:Good news (Score:2, Insightful)
Java/.NET (Score:3, Insightful)
real? to whom? .NET? .NET application consist of?
Who documented an 800% performance increase by switching from Java to
What components/technologies did the Java application and the
Re:Good news (Score:5, Informative)
In addition to that, Borland have a personal edition of C# Builder [borland.com] available, which is free as in beer, but not licensed for commercial use.
Re:Good news (Score:2)
Re:Good news (Score:2, Informative)
It's my understanding that #Develop is trying to create a cross platform compilable version of their IDE as well.
Re:Good news (Score:4, Interesting)
1) Students can learn most of J2EE in half a semester of a 3h course (up to Message Driven Beans) with difficulty. The
2)
3)
You can now do the same with JSF (Java Server Faces) which looks and feels like VS.Net for making those terrible websites.
Struts is still probably the best (as far as flexibility and features) MVC architecture out there, and if it were ported to
On the other side, VS.Net has the BEST SOAP/WebServices development I have seen to date. You can create a SOAP object in seconds, and I have. So far, this is the only redeaming quality of
As far as I know, there are no MVC frameworks for
I have to use
Re:Good news (Score:2)
Yay! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yay! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Yay! (Score:3, Informative)
This is exciting, at least for me. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's also slightly encouraging to see Microsoft adopting the use of technology like XML and moving a bit closer to standards with their software... their new vector language is very similar to SVG, and their new forms design language is XML-based. Both seem to be pretty clean and generally simple, which means that at least theoretically it would be possible to convert these formats to truly open formats, and to open them easily in open-source software. It would be really cool to be able to just convert a Windows-oriented XAML file to a Linux-friendly format and then run the associated
The fact that Mono even runs on mobile platforms is nice, because in my opinion J2ME is one of the most horrible APIs I have ever had the misfortune of using - some solid competition for J2ME is definitely needed in the mobile sector, and I think a solid platform based on Linux and Mono might be able to deliver. There are already plenty of
Too bad they are patenting the hell out of Lonhorn (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Too bad they are patenting the hell out of Lonh (Score:3, Informative)
You probably read it here [eweek.com].
It gets interesting now, though. This guy at eWeek [eweek.com] has a theory that MS is putting all it has onto Longhorn to steamroll Linux.
If that's the case, then projects like Mono (or anything that consolidates and professionalises Linux) takes a larger sense of importance and urgency (well, kind of: MS won't release Longhorn for another decade or so...)
Re:This is exciting, at least for me. (Score:5, Informative)
Where is
Their XML is a joke, swaths of proprietry code and an arsenal of patents to defend it.
Microsoft pays lipservice to "open standards" to keep the DOJ at bay, but after that it's business as usual.
Great work on Mono guys, we can only hope that microsoft won't dare use their patents against the project.
Re:This is exciting, at least for me. (Score:3, Informative)
Though, really, why does it matter? Apple doesn't release a version of Mac OS X for x86, so you can't run OS X software on x86, just like Microsoft isn't releasing a version of
If you really want an application that fits into your workflow nicely and cooperates with all the other software on your PC, at least for now, platfor
Re:This is exciting, at least for me. (Score:3, Informative)
I'm assuming it's cheaper for Microsoft to hire a new team than to port over their framework (in strictly this context, without worrying about the Evil Empire ideology ascribed to them). This has been good: Mac versions of Micr
Re:This is exciting, at least for me. (Score:3, Insightful)
Why it's here... ROTOR [microsoft.com]
What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?
Re:This is exciting, at least for me. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This is exciting, at least for me. (Score:5, Informative)
Choice quotes from the MS website:
It will be of interest to academics and researchers wishing to teach and explore modern programming language concepts, and to
Notice that nowhere in the list of intended uses is "Development", that's because it lacks all the libraries needed to make it useful.
This software was last updated 18 months ago - it's not undergoing development.
Simply another ploy to gull people into thinking
Re:This is exciting, at least for me. (Score:4, Insightful)
MS XML is really proprietry code. Look at that proprietry code [microsoft.com]. Oh wait it looks like any other xml document.
Re:This is exciting, at least for me. (Score:3, Informative)
But it isn't SVG. OTOH I don't think it'll be too long before some cunning hacker writes some XSLT which will convert XAML into SVG + XUL. If its integrated into 'zilla users would be none the wiser.
Re:This is exciting, at least for me. (Score:2)
...
Sure, there's the
And trust me the .Net Compact Framework is a solid competition to J2ME's ugliness. It doesn't behave in any sane way, feels like a kludged, inconsistent, half-assed .net winforms implementation.
Hell, even something as sim
The Novell Connection (Score:5, Interesting)
The Mono project is an open source effort sponsored by Novell to create a free implementation of the .NET Development Framework.
Does anyone else find this interesting? We have Microsoft "creating" MS-DOS, Digital Research creating DR-DOS, Novell creating Novell Netware, Novell buying Digital Research, Microsoft creating Windows 95 and NT and killing DR-DOS and Novell Netware, Microsoft creating .NET and basing their new Longhorn OS on it, and Novell creating a free version of .NET specifically to run .NET apps on non-Microsoft platforms.
Can anyone guess what happens next? Anyone?
Novell, you had a good run. We shall miss you.
Re:The Novell Connection (Score:2, Funny)
Re:The Novell Connection (Score:3, Informative)
Combined with Sun's perceived reluctance to open Java (perceived because IBM has their VM; GNU has theirs; they don't have the popular press that a project like Mono does) and Mono has a *lot* of support behind it.
Re:The Novell Connection (Score:3, Interesting)
If Microsoft want to close down Mono, they are more likely to (try to) use their raft of .NET related
patents to do this.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Mono is a step in some direction.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Mono is a step in the right direction ( various Querries about the legal viability of mono still being an issue ). A good c# platform on Linux will encourage a lot more of the enterprise sector adapters to think about Linux in a positive frame of mind - and might even encourage cross platform development. ( apart from QT there isnt really any alternative at this time ).
However for the Open Source community to really achieve something great and be able to lead 'from the front' - we need to innovate, create better and more adaptable technologies not just play 'follow the leader'. Some people might say that we need to catch up first before we can lead, well - Mono should help in the catchup situation - but then what ?
Are there enough people thinking, developing and colaborating about where to go from there ?
.NET is Microsoft's answer to Java? (Score:5, Interesting)
The biggest problem I've had with C# development is that many standard classes are declared final, which means they can't be sub-classed. I assume what has happened is that MS has taken short-cuts and has simply written
Re:.NET is Microsoft's answer to Java? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:.NET is Microsoft's answer to Java? (Score:2)
Re:.NET is Microsoft's answer to Java? (Score:3, Informative)
Wake up: the ECMA standard covers c# only.
Funny you should suggets the parent to your comment was a troll. There is an ECMA standard for the CLI (i.e.
Re:.NET is Microsoft's answer to Java? (Score:2, Informative)
If you subclass and add methods in your class there is nothing to stop the original class adding new identically named methods in a subsequent release.
It is generally much better to favour composition over inheritance unless a class specifically documents that it is intended to be subclassed - eg/ abstract classes.
Re:.NET is Microsoft's answer to Java? (Score:4, Informative)
Another thing I've found extremely prohibitive with the standard
Re:.NET is Microsoft's answer to Java? (Score:3, Insightful)
I've never found fragile base-classes to be a problem in Java, where it's a lot easier to override a method than in C#. In Java, by default all methods are virtual, and therefore can be overridden. In C#, however, a method has to be explicitly declared to be virtual before it can be overridden by a derived class.
It is generally much better to favour compo
Re:.NET is Microsoft's answer to Java? (Score:3, Informative)
However, I'm betting you've never seen programmers try to use inheritance to express relationships of a "has a" (or "other") nature, because they haven't thought it through clearly (the "if all you have is a hammer..." syndrome).
So, it's helpful to train programmers to think about the "is a"/"has a"/etc relationship up front, rather than just kind of fuzzily using inheritance because they know the classes are related (and then maybe deciding that there is an "is a" relat
Intellectual Property Issues (Score:5, Insightful)
At the rate that Microsoft is applying for patents [slashdot.org], I can imagine Microsoft being in a position like SCO--except with evidence on Microsoft's side.
It seems like a lose/lose situation for GNU/Linux. If Mono doesn't catch on then it will be tough for the free desktop to compete with Longhorn. If, however, Mono does catch on and becomes a major development backbone for GNU/Linux, then we risk having Microsoft Intellectual Property embedded deep within a lot of free software projects.Compatible... how long? (Score:4, Interesting)
Or, if this dosn't help, declare it's all copyright protected and sue Mono? DMCA, anyone? Or at least prevent them from continuing their work?
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the guys at Ximian have done great work, but you can't trust Microsoft. This is not MS-bashing, this is a lesson many companies have learned in the past-- learned the hard way.
Re:Compatible... how long? (Score:5, Informative)
For this it states:
How about slowly locking out? (Score:2)
Yet, what keeps MS from extending the
On the MS side, simply re-compile your stuff and it will run under the new, improved
I'm probably paranoid.
But maybe we read about a secret MS strategy email on
Re:Compatible... how long? (Score:2)
Re:Compatible... how long? (Score:2)
< hat type="tinfoil" >
If Microsoft have already "hidden" parts of the API which identify their implementation of
I have said it once (Score:5, Insightful)
Simply put,
It is even worse, because it gives the impression that
Re:I have said it once (Score:2)
Maybe I misunderstood you, but AFAIK Wine is an Open Source implementation of Microsoft Windows API.
Re:I have said it once (Score:5, Interesting)
But that's totally different!
A Win32 app running on Windows is talking directly to the OS; a Win32 app running on Linux is going through Wine as an extra layer. That's why Wine doesn't make Win32 apps cross-platform.
But Mono is a native implementation of the CLR. A
Re:I have said it once (Score:3)
People get really hung up on cross platform apps - Java was designed to do that but ended up simply inventing a new platform and hauling it around everywhere, .N
Re:I have said it once (Score:5, Informative)
MonoDevelop (Score:5, Informative)
While it's not quite up to the task of stable work yet, it will become a great IDE for
Why C# will not succeed? (Score:2, Funny)
No Beta 1.0 .pkg for OS X. (Score:2, Informative)
Beta 1.0 is currently only available as packages for RedHat 9, Fedora Core 1, SuSE, SLES and as an installer for Windows - there currently isn't an OS X installer or .pkg as the story seems to imply. Infact, there doesn't ever seem to have been a packaged release of Mono for OS X.
The Mono status on the front page says that there is a JIT
Re:No Beta 1.0 .pkg for OS X. (Score:2)
Cool Vb Compiler (Score:4, Informative)
Someones doing a VB Compiler in Mono [dotgeek.org]
that would be an interesting thing should it ever produce binary compatibles.
Re:Cool Vb Compiler (Score:2)
Mandrake Cooker packages available (Score:3, Informative)
I haven't enabled all experimental features but winelib support is there. I'd like to hear some feedback for it.
Um, why?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Name me ONE good reason why I would need to do that...
Re:Um, why?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Name me ONE good reason why I would need to do that...
I'll name you a few.
Money has already been spent designing the application for windows.
Money has already been spent training users of the application.
There is a huge base of trained developers, administrators, documentation and off the shelf software available that could be leveraged on a cheaper Linux desktop.
More web applications are likely to incorporate web controls designed for .NET (cf XAML).
The MS alternatives to corresponding Linux apps are better/faster/more mature/more stable. (Either generally, or in a specific instance.)
That'll do for now.
Re:Um, why?? (Score:2)
HA!
Re:Um, why?? (Score:4, Insightful)
If that isn't a good enough reason for you, how about this:
Name me one good reason NOT to do that.
Re:Um, why?? (Score:2, Funny)
Optimizing for processor, etc (Score:5, Interesting)
It would be nice if the open source community could take Mono and optimize for various chips and cards. As you may or may not know,
It would be great if I could write a
I could see Novell optimizing for one particular distro
Much better option (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's put it this way, you can write 100% free applications with GCJ, and there is even a way to compile Java applications for Windows that don't need a JVM installed to run!!!
http://thisiscool.com/gcc_mingw.htm
Re:Much better option (Score:3, Insightful)
The performance is abysmal.
Eclipse/Motif is much, much faster, but unfortunately it's Motif. On Windows, it absolutely rocks.
Until SWT's GTK performance is usable, it is not a viable alternative.
SWEET! (Score:2, Interesting)
.net Domains Run .Net? (Score:2, Insightful)
With M$ Dot Net technology out there, it's as if any
Which standard will they follow?` (Score:5, Interesting)
Both (Score:5, Informative)
For example, a GNOME app written in C# for Mono would not use the Microsoft stack at all. So even if Microsoft broke/changed/patented the Microsoft (non-ECMA) stack, that would have zero effect on the tons of Open Source/Free Software apps developed using the ECMA and Mono assemblies. Thus, Mono provides both a great set of languages (C# and anything else that can run on the CLR), a good solid runtime (Mono+CLR stacks), an efficient and cross platform interpreter and JIT/AOT compilers, and so on.
The only thing Microsoft can kill is Microsoft compatibility. Which really isn't all that interesting to most FOSS developers.
Any distributions planning Mono rollout? (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft's new propaganda line for Mono (Score:5, Insightful)
That way, it puts the focus back on Microsoft, and it makes Mono seem like a runner up. It also acts as a set up for future propaganda, when full compatibility is not achieved, and when Microsoft changes the compatibility rules in
You can see the propaganda reflected in timothy's lead for the story. That's not to say that timothy is part of it -- after all, he may simply have been affected by the propaganda himself.
But Mono developers have always stated that compatibility with Microsoft's
On the contrary, Mono has always stated that their purpose is to provide a C# development environment for Linux (an enhanced environment, in fact, considering its support for Java and other languages). This has two benefits:
1. C# is a good programming environment, providing a good object model, multi-language support, and so on. For some types of development, it provides solutions that were previously lacking on Linux.
2. Even if it's not fully compatible, Mono provides an alternative to Microsoft's
As to the patents concern, Mono developers have stated from the beginning that they are avoiding anything that smacks of being patented/patentable, and are sticking to the open and documented C# Standard. Microsoft went through the standards process for C# in order to give the illusion that they intended C# to be cross platform. Microsoft never intended anyone to call their bluff, and actually create an alternative C# platform, but Mono did. Of course, Microsoft kept the network services and authentication parts of
As to the fact that C# appears to be a good design, that shouldn't surprise us. According to the rumor, the original concepts for
Anyway, that's enough rambling. Congratulations to the Mono development team.
Re:Sure, it's here now... (Score:4, Informative)
According to your predictions for Mono, Microsoft should have litigated Samba into the ground years ago. Remind me, how many lawsuits has MS filed against Samba? Oh, that's right, ZERO . Not a single fucking case. Man, that bodes ill for Mono, doesn't it!
Of course the Samba team didn't get any support from Microsoft. But Samba still exists, and it still works.
Likewise, Microsoft can't break
And even in the case that MS do break compatibility... why should we care? Will that mean that Gnome apps using Mono and GTK# will suddenly stop running on Linux? Of course not. We'll still have something cool of our own.
Re:Sure, it's here now... (Score:5, Insightful)
Secondly, there is no such thing as a "compatibility" issue with the CLR. Old versions of classes/assemblies/interfaces continue to run side-by-side with the newer versions. If Microsoft makes a breaking change, it won't hurt existing implementations and applications.
Besides - everyone always overlooks that the CLR + Base Class Libraries (WinFX) are THE supported API for Longhorn. This means if Microsoft fiddles with anything, it hurts their own apps AND their 3rd party developers.
This isn't like the CIFS where only Microsoft deals with it; this is the API which everyone has to use. They are two totally different beasts. Microsoft never said CIFS was an open protocol and never promised it would stay stable. But they have delivered on the CLR+C# being a documented system and they do promise it will be stable.
There is absolutely positively no way to "harm" mono unless Microsoft shoots themselves and all their 3rd party developers in the foot (and those developers writing hordes of applications is what gives Windows its staying power - not something lightly abandoned).
As for the patent issue, we discussed this already. It is what is called a "defensive" patent portfolio. We've already seen Microsoft get submarined by little companies coming along and claiming patents on things like browser plugins. You think that won't bring Mozilla down too? Think again.
Microsoft is patenting anything/everything so no one can come along and try to shoot them down with insane obvious patents later. This is a result of a broken patent system and we all know that.
Well I feel better about that patent issue... (Score:3, Interesting)
The only difference between a "defensive" patent portfolio and an "offensive" patent portfolio is that they haven't used the patents offensively yet.
FAT patents anyone?
--
Simon
Re:Without Windows.Forms.Whatever (Score:3, Informative)
They are working on a couple of solutions though. First, is GTK#, that (along with bindings to all others Gnome Libs) will allow you to quickly develop a linux application using an API just like windows.form but with GTK widgets. Don't confuse c#, the
Re:Without Windows.Forms.Whatever (Score:3, Informative)
GTK# is nothing like Windows.Forms. It's like C GTK+. The idea of GTK# isn't to allow porting Windows apps easily to GTK#, the idea is to allow writing new applications with a good, solid, intelligently designed toolkit.
GTK# also is not just a Linux solution. GTK+ runs on Windows, X11, and many other graphics architectures, a
Java and Mono serve different purposes (Score:3, Informative)
I can understand why you might have that impression, but I don't think it's true.
I think both Java and Mono have a place on Linux.
Java provides an excellent cross platform la
Re:Java and Mono serve different purposes (Score:3, Informative)
GCC (GCJ, actually) does more than this. It can compile Java source code straight to a native executable without ever creating byte codes. Also, it can compile byte codes (.class files and whole JAR files I think) into native code. It can also still compile Java source to byte codes if necessary. Even if you compile to native code, it still includes a byte code engine in case you need to load class files that haven't been compiled to native code.
The 3.4 release of GCJ can c