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No, the new stuff is more important. If people start, today, developing applications and want to keep it working on Windows/Mono they need the features of today working; not last decades technology.

Realistically, as much as possible, they should be done simultaneously. But I'd say the new stuff is more important as that's what people will want to use who are actually interested in keeping a port.

There is very little risk in using Winforms. Because MS has not complained about this and they have complained about other implementations (like Indigo), they have given their unofficial approval.

I suppose it is possible that they might sue someone, but there is not a single court in the US that would let them win. I suppose it could be differently internationally (IANAL). In the US, though, this kind of precedent is considered extremely important.

There is very little risk in using Winforms. Because MS has not complained about this and they have complained about other implementations (like Indigo), they have given their unofficial approval.

I suppose it is possible that they might sue someone, but there is not a single court in the US that would let them win. I suppose it could be differently internationally (IANAL). In the US, though, this kind of precedent is considered extremely important.

Hmmm. I would think the US is probably the one jurisdiction where you would be most concerned about this.

I think you may be thinking of trademark law, where you lose it if you don't defend it. Copyright and patent law are different.

IANAL either, but I do think Novell is taking a calculated risk based on various factors. Whether MS has grounds or not is almost irrelevant, if Mono takes off and MS senses a threat they could launch a legal battle. Look at SCO. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone that believes their case has any merit left, if it ever did, yet it is still dragging through the courts with no clear end in sight. And although Novell has extended indemnity protection to their enterprise linux customers, protection does not extend to mono.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not poo-poo'ing Novell or mono, nor defending MS. Just pointing out the realities of the business environment we're stuck with until things change for the better. There are some valid concerns there.

I agree. Mono is a calculated risk for Novell, and one I don't think is really in their best interest. It is ambitious, though, and has a (small) chance of being huge for them.

I would be EXTREMELY surprised if MS started suing people who are probably their own customers simply for using Winforms. Even MS has seen how well that went over for SCO. If they do eventually get tough they may sue Novell, but the worst they'll do to end users is to send out a threatening letter. Probably with a pamphlet about how easy it would be to move that offending code to a "legal" MS .Net platform.

Edited to add the following:

I don't really think MS will take a legal strategy at all, though. They'll just employ the classic embrace, extend, and extinguish strategy they're so good at. If Mono becomes too popular they'll simply start releasing a bunch of libraries for .NET only, like they did with Indigo. That gives them the ability to talk about how they are embracing the open source community and allowing .NET to run on any platform you like, while at the same time touting how much better their version is than the knockoff you can get for free.

Edited 2005-11-18 02:50

Compare that to Redhat, where they are advancing GCJ and have complete support for Java and Eclipse natively. Furthermore, they have both a completely free version and a tremendous and proven support option for enterprise-class deployments. Would I trust my data center to Miguel? No freaking way.

Well, the killer is the fact that Java is where the market is for application servers, certainly on non-Windows systems. That's why Red Hat is doing what they're doing with gcj. There's money in it and they have the infrastructure around Java and an IDE environment in Eclipse to actually follow through with what they plan to do. Red Hat have been able to do a great deal with gcj and Java in a very short space of time, and that shows that it can at least be viable for them to work with.

There is simply no market whatsoever for Mono in the Linux and non-Windows world, and does not justify any of the investment that has been made in it nor will it ever pay that investment back. It's a project that takes up a huge amount of developer time, resources and money just to tread water and it needs a backer like Novell to provide it. Yes, I know it all looks very nice on somebody's blog, with pretty logos to go with it, but it is a world away from creating something that is viable and that generates income. Novell is definitely not a company that can fund such a large fixed cost project and give it away for nothing. It's the shortest route to eliminating any cash pile you have left and going bust.

I just wonder how deep the cost cutting at Novell really has cut and just how accurate this stuff actually is. I'll say no more......

There is simply no market whatsoever for Mono in the Linux and non-Windows world, and does not justify any of the investment that has been made in it nor will it ever pay that investment back.

Not necessarily. With the eventual arrival of Vista, ..NET programming is going to be the rage on Windows platforms. And if Mono is mature enough that I can take my Windows .NET apps and port them over to Mono without too much agony, I might just consider doing that.
However, if Mono is always going to be two steps behind (as seems to be the case so far), then you're right .. it's use on non-Windows systems may be limited. But then again, how much usage does Java currently enjoy on Windows platforms? Honestly, I haven't used a Java desktop app yet that I've actually liked. Jedit was alright, but even it reeks of its Java underpinnings.

>> With the eventual arrival of Vista, ..NET programming is going to be the rage

wake up, look at gmaps, gmail, flickr salesforce.com etc etc

THESE are the apps of tomorrow

even microsoft has conceded in a major way that they missed services and are now coming back with a vengence to try to get back lost turf...not even they believe .net programming is going to take over the world at this point

the browser stack is the new application delivery platform

theGrump,
.net has everything to do with their web development strategy too. While I'm a PHP fan it's clear that ASP.net is a very nice development framework.

As a web developer I love seeing what's happening with web applications but you're dreaming if that is making all desktop applications obsolete.

Don't buy too much into hype surrounding web 2.0. It's incredible stuff but it's still just an evolutionary change.

Not necessarily.

Yes.

With the eventual arrival of Vista, ..NET programming is going to be the rage on Windows platforms.

I'm afraid you're a bit deluded if you think that is going to translate into success on non-Windows platforms. .Net is a Windows technology, uses exclusively Windows and Microsoft technology and will do so even more. The fact that parts of it might be achievable from a cross platform point of view is irrelevant.

I am looking at a market that exists for Linux vendors which is the Java application server market. There is simply no .Net market for non-Windows systems, and even the Windows one is a bit slow.

But then again, how much usage does Java currently enjoy on Windows platforms? Honestly, I haven't used a Java desktop app yet that I've actually liked. Jedit was alright, but even it reeks of its Java underpinnings.

We're not talking about Windows desktop applications (otherwise what's the point of Mono?), and I'm not even talking about desktop applications. The market is on the server side, and that's where a Linux vendor's bread and butter is. The desktop side is a bonus, and with Eclipse that's what Red Hat look as if they're working on tools-wise, but the Java application server market is their clear aim. That's just one of the reasons why Red Hat is booming and Novell isn't, but if Novell think they're just going to copy Red Hat's lead and it will all fall into place then they're going to be even more disappointed.

Bah, What you fail to understand is that .net is already a success on Linux. Mono apps are quickly becoming (if not already there) the finest applications avaialble on gnome.

Bah, What you fail to understand is that .net is already a success on Linux.

.Net is not a success on Linux - and neither is Mono. A photo editor and one or two other pieces of partly finished software just don't count. Plus, they are not contributing to a company like Novell making money.

Since trolls like you keep pricing stupids thinks like amaroK I think pricing F-Spot is not out of the context.

This living in the moment logic is why Windows is the top desktop platform today: They attracted developers with valueless development tools and libraries. Now guess what people have to buy to get these programs written with these tools?

I'd agree Novell has little chance of making much money on Mono; other than maybe licensing out publishing. But I think it's a very worthwhile project.

>> There is simply no market whatsoever for Mono in the Linux and non-Windows world, and does not justify any of the investment that has been made in it nor will it ever pay that investment back.

agreed 100%

they basically put all their chips on a losing bet - the the .net platform would become an industry standard application delivery tool that linux users would have to support.

.net has not gone away but it isn't changing how anyone works. for novell it is truly throwing good money after bad...what apps from the microsoft world do they hope to support? whats the point?

and this may sound childish but seeing .exe and .dll files on my linux box....euuuwww. i think many other users have the same opinion, they just don't want to see this.

> and this may sound childish but seeing .exe and .dll
> files on my linux box....euuuwww. i think many other
> users have the same opinion, they just don't want to
> see this.

You're right, this is a childish behaviour or one could say religious or foolish behaviour too.
Who cares about the file format, as long as they're not closed??

noise != adoption. There is certainly a lot of noise on Java, but relatively little action. The reality is, the overwhelming majority of users and customers consider Java's 'strengths' of the lowest importance at the end of the day; they simply do not switch their platforms, nor do they care about the 'third-party'. This is why .NET adoption has already surpassed Java worldwide, especially in critical applications. Coordination, direction, commitment customer and user focus goes a very long way.

A MS funded study showed Linux more effective than Windows 2000 for web serving environments. The result is a vastly improved IIS6.0, dedicated web server versions of Windows 2003, and an overhaul of licesing for web hosts. Microsoft provides full disclosure with detailed explainations with all it's results. MS-funded studies are expected to do the same. This is the kind of commitment and confidence customers are looking for, not some lame "it must be biased" brush off.

>GCJ? Stop embarrassing yourself. Nobody cares about it.

End users don't care what kind of environment they run
they simply want Azureus, RSSOwl, JAlbum, EasyPhoto, Eclipse run out of the box. GCJ is the solution.

>Everybody will just use a real JVM from Sun or IBM.
>Classpath will always be behind

IBM,Bea,Oracle,BlackDown,Apple are always behind SUN
but people run apple java on Mac OS
and IBM java on AIX
guess what we will use on Linux? ;-)

> IBM,Bea,Oracle,BlackDown,Apple are always behind SUN
> but people run apple java on Mac OS
> and IBM java on AIX

I think the original posted was talking about "GNU Classpath" not necessarily the proprietary editions of Java which happen to all be derivatives of Sun's Java, they are licensees of Sun that happen to tune it, adapt it to their own VMs.

I think the original posted was talking about "GNU Classpath" not necessarily the proprietary editions of Java

We were talking about who needs GCJ ;-)
And I was trying to explain the end users need it
because they don't care who did software if it works well .

Regards,
Vitaliy
http://wf.runa.ru

GCJ? Stop embarrassing yourself. Nobody cares about it. Everybody will just use a real JVM from Sun or IBM.

No, they will use what comes with their system and what they get packaged support for. In the case of Red Hat that will be classpath and GCJ. They have some work left to do with it, but it is totally manageable when compared to the resources Novell has poured down the drain with Mono.

The only interesting thing about GCJ is as a deployment option in limited circumstances.

Not now.

As usual, Segedunum gives us a glimpse into his fantasy world where windows is far, far away from linux and there is no overlap.

No, there isn't. You can't run Windows technology on other operating systems, and pretending that you can is just plain lying. If you do you're on a hiding to nothing.

He conveniently forgets about ASP.NET. Winforms is meaningless in the grand scheme of things - especially considering the whole Wine implementation debacle

ASP.Net on Mono is absolutely useless. People run ASP.Net on Windows, and in the application server (inside organisations) and web server worlds people run Java and PHP (in the web world) in particular on non-Windows platforms. They are proven platforms on those systems. Porting ASP.Net to other platforms is a complete waste of everyone's time.

Basically you need to hope that ASP.Net (and .Net in general), Microsoft and Windows replaces Java and other software (and also Linux and Unix - .Net only runs on Windows!) in the application server and web server world, and then there might be some faint hope that there will be a market for Mono and people will use it to move from Microsoft's implementations. You need to check yourself into a padded cell if you think that's viable.

but Segedunum (in typical delusional fashion) would have us believe that everything on the server is Java when obviously it is not the case.

Actually look at the market that they're in twit. In the Unix/Linux world the market is for Java applications servers, and that's where the money is. There isn't even that much of a market for .Net server applications inside many organisations with MS.Net on Windows! It's fairly miniscule compared to Java usage in that area, and no, leave out the Microsoft marketing rhetoric. Java is a portable technology, designed to be so, and has multiple vendors and companies involved. Microsoft can do their .Net thing, but it has absolutely no relevance whatsoever for anyone else.

Develop with VS and deploy on unix.

That's the daftest thing I have ever heard or seen of when people have talked about Mono, and in the context of running .Net applications and running on Mono it isn't even worthy of further discussion.

If you do what Mainsoft does, and that is to aid J2EE server development in Visual Studio alongside building .Net front-ends that run on Windows, then perhaps, because you're using a technology there is a market for and that is actually designed to be portable to different operating systems, is guaranteed to continue to be so and has a market on different OSs. Developing in, and for, Microsoft's .Net and porting to Mono? No - absolutely absurd. In the products that Mainsoft sell and put emphasis on they seem to have worked that one out.

And of course Seg forgets to talk about how Sun is supposed to recoup their Java investment.

That's Sun's problem, but how other companies choose to use Java is up to them. Sun could easily make much more money from Java, but then again, Sun are useless at most things like that.

How does Sun do it? Maybe they need another round of funding from sugar daddy Microsoft.

Sun has at least some revenue coming from Java that also, to a lesser extent, bolsters their other sales as well. Mono makes absolutely zilch for Novell, nor are they even using it internally for themselves. JBoss is the application server in SLES and OES. Sun actually use Java internally and the also have a Java community full of companies that are actually making money from Java who contribute, albeit through Sun. Mono is the biggest elephant carried away on a blanket of hype and bollocks I've ever seen.

Yes, stop while you're behind.

Either you didn't know what I meant by that comment, or perhaps you did ;-).

You've embarrassed yourself enough already.

I hardly think so. You're actually embarrassing yourself, but as usual, because you have no idea at all you believe yourself - as usual.

You just have no clue where the markets are, what the markets are and where the money actually is. The money is not in running .Net on any other platforms apart from Windows and the money is not in copying Microsoft's technologies. You need to get your ear to the ground and yourself fully on the grapevine before commenting with stuff that doesn't make any commercial sense whatsoever. Red Hat are on it, and that's why they're the number one Linux vendor by a country mile.

You can't run Windows technology on other operating systems, and pretending that you can is just plain lying.
Could you tell me about why is .NET a windows technolgy ? IMHO .NET is not a windows technology, and java (or PHP) also not a linux or unix technologies. Yes, the best .NET implementation at this moment is the mictosoft .NET but you can run .NET applications under linux with mono. It is not complete, but it is not because the .NET is tied to win32, only because the resources behind the mono is lesser then the resources behind the .NET. If you see the open source java implementations, you will see very similar situation: the best java implementation is the SUN JDK. You can run some java apps with gcj (like you can run some .NET apps with mono) but the gcj never will 100% compatible with the current SUN JDK.

>Could you tell me about why is .NET a windows technolgy

Try to run ASP.NET on Linux,AIX,Solaris,MacOS X,FreeBSD
and you will find the answer.

>the best .NET implementation at this moment is the mictosoft .NET

Do you know any other implementations of .NET 2?
The ONLY implementation is for MS Windows.

>you will see very similar situation: the best java implementation is the SUN JDK

JDK from SUN is not tiered to any particular OS
It runs on Linux, Solaris,Windows.

Best Regards,
Vitaliy
http://wf.runa.ru

Try to run ASP.NET on Linux,AIX,Solaris,MacOS X,FreeBSD and you will find the answer.
I don't have AIX, Solaris, MacOS, but I created a little ASP.NET apps with datagrid (and firedbird database server + firebird data provider). It was run under linux without any problem.

Do you know any other implementations of .NET 2?
The ONLY implementation is for MS Windows.
Mono is implemented many important features from .NET 2 (C# 2.0, etc). But it is only question of time (and the number of developers behind the mono). But IMHO the official microsoft .NET for linux also possible in the future.

JDK from SUN is not tiered to any particular OS
It runs on Linux, Solaris,Windows.
Yes, it is true now. But in the first years the only one java implementation for linux was the blackdown.org unofficial port. The secondary was not the SUN, but the Borland's implementation. The SUN standpoint for linux is very doubtful. Yes, they give openoffice, give java, give Netbeans, Studio Creator, Java Studio 8 for free, but the quesiton is: why ? IMHO not becuse the SUN is beneficent, just because this is good for the actual business interests of the company. IMHO there aren't good or evil companies, there are only different business strategies and products.

>>Try to run ASP.NET on Linux,AIX,Solaris,MacOS X,FreeBSD and you will find the answer.
>I don't have AIX, Solaris, MacOS, but I created a little ASP.NET apps with datagrid (and firedbird database server + firebird data provider). It was run under linux without any problem.


The key word is little. Because of it each time you run MS .net apps on mono you think will it work or not.


>>Do you know any other implementations of .NET 2?
The ONLY implementation is for MS Windows.
Mono is implemented many important features from .NET 2 (C# 2.0, etc).

The the key word is many.
Every time you run windows app you think will it work or not?


>>JDK from SUN is not tiered to any particular OS
>>It runs on Linux, Solaris,Windows.
>Yes, it is true now. But in the first years the only one java implementation for linux was the blackdown.org unofficial port.


Blackdown could run any java application while mono can't run a half of .net applications.


>IMHO there aren't good or evil companies, there are only different business strategies and products.

We are not talking about who is good and who is evil. We are talking about what was designed to be portable (JAVA) and what was not designed to be portable (.NET).

Regards,
Vitaliy
http://wf.runa.ru

No, they will use what comes with their system and what they get packaged support for. In the case of Red Hat that will be classpath and GCJ. They have some work left to do with it, but it is totally manageable when compared to the resources Novell has poured down the drain with Mono.

Please put down the crack pipe. People that buy redhat boxes and are going to run app servers are NOT EVER going to be running GCJ and an incomplete, buggy classpath when they get the real deal for free.

The only interesting thing about GCJ is as a deployment option in limited circumstances.

Not now.

I've already done it for a standalone fat app.

No, there isn't. You can't run Windows technology on other operating systems, and pretending that you can is just plain lying. If you do you're on a hiding to nothing.

That statement just proves you are complete idiot. .NET is ecma specs and APIS. There's no magic here. People are already running "windows tech" on other operating systems and have been for years.

ASP.Net on Mono is absolutely useless. People run ASP.Net on Windows, and in the application server (inside organisations) and web server worlds people run Java and PHP (in the web world) in particular on non-Windows platforms. They are proven platforms on those systems. Porting ASP.Net to other platforms is a complete waste of everyone's time.

Guess what, you don't get to decide what is a waste of time. You are irrelevant and not a decision maker. But please tell Munich that it was a waste of time to run Mono. I'm sure they'll be eager to explain to a basement dweller like you their reasoning.

Basically you need to hope that ASP.Net (and .Net in general), Microsoft and Windows replaces Java and other software (and also Linux and Unix - .Net only runs on Windows!) in the application server and web server world, and then there might be some faint hope that there will be a market for Mono and people will use it to move from Microsoft's implementations. You need to check yourself into a padded cell if you think that's viable.

How more stupid can you possibly get Sedge? It's not like Java is 100% and Microsoft is 0% and that's the only way it can be. Microsoft is already in the app and web server world. Once you leave that basement of yours one of these days you'll realize that.

Actually look at the market that they're in twit. In the Unix/Linux world the market is for Java applications servers, and that's where the money is. There isn't even that much of a market for .Net server applications inside many organisations with MS.Net on Windows! It's fairly miniscule compared to Java usage in that area, and no, leave out the Microsoft marketing rhetoric. Java is a portable technology, designed to be so, and has multiple vendors and companies involved. Microsoft can do their .Net thing, but it has absolutely no relevance whatsoever for anyone else.

See we don't live in your fantasy world. You don't get to make the rules or the decisions. You have no influence. You want to live in a world where Microsoft doesn't even exist in the server market, but the rest of us rational people already know they do. Java on the server is being challeneged on many fronts. EJB and and half of the J2EE stack is looked at as a failure by many hardcore java developers.

If you do what Mainsoft does, and that is to aid J2EE server development in Visual Studio alongside building .Net front-ends that run on Windows, then perhaps, because you're using a technology there is a market for and that is actually designed to be portable to different operating systems, is guaranteed to continue to be so and has a market on different OSs. Developing in, and for, Microsoft's .Net and porting to Mono? No - absolutely absurd. In the products that Mainsoft sell and put emphasis on they seem to have worked that one out.

Some random babbling about Mainsoft and "porting" which is totally irrelevant.

That's Sun's problem, but how other companies choose to use Java is up to them. Sun could easily make much more money from Java, but then again, Sun are useless at most things like that.

We can agree on that.


Sun has at least some revenue coming from Java that also, to a lesser extent, bolsters their other sales as well. Mono makes absolutely zilch for Novell, nor are they even using it internally for themselves. JBoss is the application server in SLES and OES. Sun actually use Java internally and the also have a Java community full of companies that are actually making money from Java who contribute, albeit through Sun. Mono is the biggest elephant carried away on a blanket of hype and bollocks I've ever see

Mono was already in full development when Novell bought Ximian. But you can't compare the amount of money that Novell spends on Mono developers to what Sun spends on Java. Mono is open source and actually attracts volunteer developers while Sun has some quasi-open source thing going on with Java and has spent tens if not hundreds of millions on java development over the years. There's really no comparison. Oh, and other people making money off of Java doesn't really do Sun any good despite Schwartz's new little open source philosophy.

You just have no clue where the markets are, what the markets are and where the money actually is. The money is not in running .Net on any other platforms apart from Windows and the money is not in copying Microsoft's technologies. You need to get your ear to the ground and yourself fully on the grapevine before commenting with stuff that doesn't make any commercial sense whatsoever. Red Hat are on it, and that's why they're the number one Linux vendor by a country mile.

You sitting in your mom's basement trying to play market analyst is irrelevant to the real world. Novell 's transition pains really have nothing to do with Mono . But nobody is making money off of "code" except Microsoft. Let's hope that Novell doesn't play the RedHat game and think that having everything open source is some kind of win. That's the losing proposition.

RedHat is not "on" anything. The only thing they have going is that they got into the commercial game early, PHBs associate Linux with them, and some clever buybacks of their stock.

People that buy redhat boxes and are going to run app servers are NOT EVER going to be running GCJ and an incomplete, buggy classpath when they get the real deal for free.

Red Hat will have a Java application server (and does with Jonas) and it will be based on GCJ. It will be bundled with their servers as a supported option and people will use it.

I've already done it for a standalone fat app.

Good for you.

NET is ecma specs and APIS. There's no magic here. People are already running "windows tech" on other operating systems and have been for years.

Anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows that the ECMA specs do not equal cross .Net platform apps. The ECMA stuff specifies the absolute bare minimum that is good for nothing.

Running an application and have it crash at some point, or for it to be dog slow, or for the APIs to be incomplete so you can't move it from MS .Net (i.e. most of Mono, like Indigo - Windows specific), or for it to almost work, is far, far different to having something work reliably that will stay working.

It's not like Java is 100% and Microsoft is 0% and that's the only way it can be. Microsoft is already in the app and web server world.

In corporate, company environments .Net is nowhere near in the application server world to where Java is. That's why Sun needs to be making more money out of it than they are.

Once you leave that basement of yours one of these days you'll realize that.

Feel free to get yourself a job and work in a company environment and with companies where this stuff happens.

You want to live in a world where Microsoft doesn't even exist in the server market, but the rest of us rational people already know they do.

Feel free to put down the Microsoft marketing literature.

Java on the server is being challeneged on many fronts.

Certainly not by .Net.

EJB and and half of the J2EE stack is looked at as a failure by many hardcore java developers.

Nope.

Some random babbling about Mainsoft and "porting" which is totally irrelevant.

Developing with Visual Studio for .Net and then porting to non-Windows platforms with Mono is one of the daftest ideas ever. How clear do you want it to be?

thing going on with Java and has spent tens if not hundreds of millions on java development over the years.

I doubt it is that much, but the difference is that Sun had the money and actually had a market for Java. There is no comparison with Mono.

Mono is open source and actually attracts volunteer developers

Volunteer developers are not good enough to make it good enough. It needs backing and serious resources, and that needs to be paid for.

Novell 's transition pains really have nothing to do with Mono .


Hmmmmm ;-).

Let's hope that Novell doesn't play the RedHat game and think that having everything open source is some kind of win. That's the losing proposition.

The difference is that Red Hat are making money from that philosophy, and have just about cornered the market as a Linux vendor.

RedHat is not "on" anything. The only thing they have going is that they got into the commercial game early, PHBs associate Linux with them, and some clever buybacks of their stock.

There are always reasons why those things happen. Getting in early is one factor, but there has been more than enough rope for other companies to get in on the act and get serious. They've failed miserably, but because Red Hat's software is open source anyone is free to have a go.

While I don't have quite the negative opinion you do about Ximian/Novell, I have to agree I don't see much reason to choose them anymore. The only thing they really had over RedHat was great KDE support, and now that it seems they're trying to move to GNOME as much as possible they seem to me like a RedHat wannabe IMHO.

I suppose the real difference between the 2 now is that Novell is focusing on Mono (unproven tech) while RedHat is focused on Java (very popular for their market right now). Add the fact that RedHat has been in the Linux business for longer and is completely focused on that, and I can't really think of any reason to choose Novell unless they offer a big discount.

Good, move to Fedora and stay there . It will not be long before every Linux distribution, specially those that really embrace commercial utilization (there goes anything that is cemented on Qt) begin including Mono.

Take a look at the the desktop enhancing applications that are created by both Open Source hackers (f-spot, Banshee, Beagle, MonoDevelop, etc.) and those from the Windows world that are simply being ported to Linux (MojoPortal, nGallery, NAnt, NUnit, etc.). Java is good stuff, KDE is great too, why can't users, specially programmers enjoy it all in harmony?

Novell/SUSE and Mono ROCK HARD!

Another thing you forgot was what I consider to be one of Mono's major killer apps...ASP.net support. ASP.net is one of the few things that Microsoft has gotten more or less right. I have yet to find a faster web application development platform than VisualStudio.NET/ASP.net (and I'm a Linux/Java geek). (Ruby on rails looks pretty good and JSPs aren't too bad. PHP is alright, but I am a little wary of all of the security issues that have been found in it recently.)

I love the idea of being able to develop for ASP.net and deploy to a Linux/BSD Apache-based server instead of a crappy IIS server. That's a feature I guarantee you'll see the next version of SuSE server touting quite heavily.

There's only one problem with what you said...IIS6 isn't nearly as crappy as IIS5, and is (IMO) well beyond Apache at this point in terms of ease of administration and performance.

The only thing prohibiting more widespread adoption of IIS6 is the license cost of Win2k3; given a web farm scenario where the equivalent MS license costs could be upwards of several hundred thousand dollars, it's a no brainer as Apache is "good enough" as it's free and natively supports more web frameworks/OS platforms. Cost aside, IIS6 is a serious force to be reckoned with.

I think you underestimate LAMP.
People would happily pay for Win2K3 if they felt they could tell their boss it was worth it, and that they could trust it.
Microsoft has no reason to be trusted on the security front for a while... This isn't my perspective either, it's what IA people keep telling me (except for the few Win2K3 obsessee's).

Performance just isn't *that* important. You buy more hardware for those "hey it's twice as slow" problems. It's when it's 10 times faster you start to notice.

For things like gaming and calculations performance may be important. But when it comes to your website the most important thing is that it doesn't get cracked, and the second most important is that it doesn't fail.

Ease of administration shouldn't be considered.. Unless it's hard to configure without reason. Anyone running an enterprise web server who can't understand apache or IIS configuration...
Now, maybe speed of administration...

"Performance just isn't *that* important. You buy more hardware for those "hey it's twice as slow" problems. It's when it's 10 times faster you start to notice."
Why yes, instead of paying a few thousand for a 20% performance increase, I'll just splash out a couple of million dollars on new hardware. Makes fantastic business sense.

"Ease of administration shouldn't be considered.. Unless it's hard to configure without reason. Anyone running an enterprise web server who can't understand apache or IIS configuration..."
Because obviously ease of administration has absolutely nothing to do with the complete amount of useful administration work done.

Well, you could develop in c .
Or do you mean development speed?

I agree though, the ASP.NET part is awesome news for LAMP. I'm sure there are a lot of people who are stuck on IIS cause their scripts are in ASP. I've never done any ASP (only PHP4) so the concept of how it's ever worked is fuzzy to me .

I wouldn't worry too much about PHP.
http://secunia.com/product/3919/ -- PHP5
http://secunia.com/product/5768/ -- PHP4.4
http://secunia.com/product/922/ -- PHP4.3 (couple of unanswered low criticality issues)
http://secunia.com/product/105/ -- PHP4.2 (ditto)

It looks like there've been a few system access exploits, but they've all been fixed.

While Red Hat may be great for your business, Evolution, Beagle and f-spot are applications I can't see the GNOME desktop without (specially after Vista comes out).

Overall, anyone can say what they want about Mono but there are already quite a few interesting apps for my desktop written with it, while Java continues to live only as a web browser plugin.
For the people who don't care about the desktop, I don't see why complain about Mono. Surely it's better to have Java AND .NET available instead of only one of them, considering you don't get to decide which one all developers will pick.

It is a shame that you don't seem to have enough experience with linux to even understand how misplaced your aggression towards Ximian is.

If you had such experience you would remember how far superior Ximian was to any of the competing desktop solutions offered at the time.

I have seen similiar posts to your here at OSNEWS and SLASHDOT and I wonder from which rock it is that you trolls crawl out of.

SuSE has until most recently (SuSE 10/OPENSUSE) had a pathetic GNOME desktop offering. Only now with the latest release is one beginning to see the fine tuning touch that Ximian brought to the GNOME experience. I won't say that what Ximian has offered was perfect, far from it, but far superior to what else was available because Ximian was, along with Eazel, the only ones to ever specificly focus on desktop integration and ease of use. Luckily much of what one once associated with Ximian has become part of GNOME proper-the difference in terms of usability between a stock GNOME installation and Ximianized GNOME has become much, much smaller over the years. Likewise OpenOffice2 incoporates much of what Ximian invested in their Ximianized versions of OpenOffice.

Up until fairly recently there was a rather funamental void between the linux kernel and the linux desktop. Any successful "desktop integration" was dependent upon system engineers, as part of a distribution, who coded a glue layer between the two to facilitate ease of use. SuSE is very well know for having some of the very best system engineers and their distribution was lauded for the work they did to help make things "just work". But the trend of the last couple of years has shifted.

Kernel developers are now, in a way, much closer to their desktop userland developers-there is more coordination, more communication, and as such a new breed of system utilites custom-tailored to the needs of the desktop users has come into being which work much more effectively and efficiently with kernel resources. The high quality work present in these new system utilites, which wonderfully bridge kernel resources and desktop apps, have obviated much of the system engineering work for which SuSE was once well known.

You don't really realize this until you witness how much "just works" and "ease of use" have become defaction parts of the systems themselves. If you look at Gentoo, Gentoo has historically only done a tiny fraction of the QA that Redhat, SuSE and Debian have done, although this is also now changing. In most cases with Gentoo you are directly using the source, ie. unmodified software directly from the developers. The Gentoo developers have worked hard to adapt the system core to these newer system utilities and as a consequence of this when one installs stock GNOME from source one finds that much of what one once *only* associated with Ximian is now present out-of-the-box with stock GNOME from source.

This is really amazing stuff. But you obviously haven't been around long enough to have seen how much has changed in the past years.

Ximain suffered much due to the void between kernel resources and the desktop application environment. Your desktop applications can be very carefully custom tailored to one another providing a coherent cohesive desktop experience-but if there is no glue between the desktop and the kernel resources your users experience little in the way of "ease of use", rather you just hear lots of angry feedback.

The growing maturity of open sources software is gradually obviating much of system engineering work which our large distributors have used to differentiates themselves from one another. But this trend is due in part to the influence of companies like Ximian(or more aptly put- the influence of trully phenomenal desktop application developers), and newer initiatives from Novel and Redhat which have chosen to invest in the new found system utilities and kernel/userland coordination.

Credit where credit is due. The people who founded SuSE were excellent hackers- they were tasked with developing endless hacks and work-arounds for all of the missing infrastructure in linux. They did a wonderful job. But now the infrastructure is maturing and the days of infinitely hacked systems like SuSE, in days of yore, are gradually receding into history.

It is a shame that you don't seem to have enough experience with linux to even understand how misplaced your aggression towards Ximian is.

If you had such experience you would remember how far superior Ximian was to any of the competing desktop solutions offered at the time.

Funny fantasy-based rewrite of history there. Ximian wasn't superior to the "competing desktop solution" SuSE/KDE experience of the time, it was an attempt to _match_ that experience. And, (briefly) Ximian was able to bring an old version of Gnome on RedHat somewhere close to that level of coherent integration into the OS. They were slowly reinventing YaST with redcarpet and the other system config tools.

Of course, in the process they flushed a bunch of VC capital, but who's counting...except the Novell shareholders watching it happen again.

A hardware accelerated programming language???

Or do you mean Hardware Accelerated Graphics? If so, mono has that in the form of the tao framework (which is a wrapper around native opengl libraries and also works on windows)

Actually that's what we intend to do, we've already tried a few of our apps and managed to successfully port them to the mac and linux.

Feel free to be rewriting often then. Winforms is not designed for non-Windows systems.