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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/" http://www.im...

It's a good alternative to MonoDevelop and SharpDevelop.

1) Does Novell provide idemnification for patent or other IP violations in MONO

2) Has Novell negotiated with Microsoft GPL-compatible RAND licensing terms for the .NET IP (which automatically apply to all OSS developers using Mono)?

Especially after java 5 the desktop applications are getting better in java. And, they are REAL cross platform. Not only GNome..



How about cross language?

Today it is not possible to fully utilize a non US keyboard
if you run Linux. Depending on what locale you use various keys will be untyepable. E.g. on a Swedish keyboard you can't type ~, on Danish, Italian,... keyboards it will be other characters.

This bug has been around for about five years, no wonder Linux developers go for mono instead of java.

For more information (or perhaps your bug vote) see:
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=4799499


In my oppinion java is cross platform only as long as you run windows. This bug have been around for over five years, no wonder Linux developers turn elsewhere.

Similar problems have also been common over time on Solaris, I have no idea of the current Solaris state though.

Not to diss Mono, but a good alternative is Java-Gnome. It can also use GCJ to compile native binaries. This way, one doesn't need a runtime. Glade also works for it and I believe integrates far better than in Mono (however Mono will have it's own RAD tool soon). Another advantage is that Eclipse is far more mature than Monodevelop. Sadly, it's not as hugely backed or hyped by Red Hat (I think 1 person) as Mono is by Novell. Documentation is lacking and there aren't as many apps as for Mono. And of course, there are those people that say since Java is by Sun it's as big of a bet as Mono.

http://java-gnome.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/bin/view

Thanks Michael but as far as I know you need gtk-sharp to build Muine and gtk-sharp is not working on amd64 so yes Mono compiles but that does not give me working application still...

aaa: a "stable" Java client for Linux ?? show me the link... I went to check www.java.com, to be sure I was not wrong and that a new client has not been released meanwhile... guess what, it crashes my browser every single time. I cannot access the website !! My typical experience with Java 64 bits !!! I know there is beta version, I am using one now... I am just complaining of the lack of stable/useable client.

This might be the final word whether or not the linux word should be afraid of Microsoft's patents on mono:

http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=140262&threshold=3&c...

"As far as I know, java cross-platform problems were ironed out years ago"

Then I invite you to go to www.gay.com and try out their chat application on Linux (assuming you have no moral objections, obviously...), with the latest JRE you can find. It's better than it used to be - you can get all the way up to the point of actually trying to enter a room, which doesn't work. Works fine on Windows, using the same Java release.

For x86-64, if Sun is not good enough, i believe BlackDown is nother option for AMD 64 bit platforms.

http://www.blackdown.org/

Even then, you must be a little patient, 64 bit in x86 is pretty new. i saw several x86-64 related new bugfixes in java 6 snapshots.
check here: https://j2se.dev.java.net/servlets/ProjectDocumentList?folderID=2315...

Most of the browser issues are not the proof that java is not cross platform.
i just distiribute our Open Office java plug-in and it seems it is working in three platforms nicely.. even with older JRE's. Java is still the king of multi platform developments.

Even with the ECMA "standardization", my understanding is that MS is only required to offer licensing under RAND terms.

Has Novell negotiated such GPL-compatible RAND licensing terms?

the features of this plugin are very skimpy - even compared to other bare-bones editors.

Everyone always brings up ECMA but almost never mentions ISO - doesn't the ISO standard also bolster mono's position? (Yes, it's a real question)

Hummm...

I see you do not like it when people have an opinion different from yours.

Interesting how you attack others, as if only what *you* think (about Mono) and only *you* can be right.

Interesting to see you prefer to attack people you disagree with rather than trying to understand their reasonning.

Psychologists would say you're in denial. Sorry for you.

Laffs

Good article, opens up my world to some new apps.

well is a big list of mono applications, is very important to create more of this and support them. :-)

Hello,

We are hoping to be feature complete by the time of the
Novell Brainshare conference. At that point we will start
running most popular Winforms applications to pinpoint the
bugs in our implementation and hopefully a few months later
release the final product.

Miguel.

I mean, mono is about portability isn't it?

Miguel,

Can you speak to the issues mentioned in my previous post:

http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=9780&offset=45&rows=60#33...

In particular:

1) Does Novell provide idemnification for patent or other IP violations in MONO

2) Has Novell negotiated with Microsoft GPL-compatible RAND licensing terms for the .NET IP (which automatically apply to all OSS developers using Mono)?

Will Novell (Ximian, the Mono project leadership, you, etc.) be doing anything to resolve IP concerns about Mono? You guys seem to have a working relationship with MS.

Can't licensing issues be resolved once and for all? Have you guys approached MS?

Hello,

Our policy is listed on our FAQ, like I said elsewhere
and a number of times, our legal council agreed that our
public position on patents in our FAQ reflected the state of
the industry and we were fine with it.

You might want to ask every other software author
whether they provide indemnity for software patents for
their products. Mono is no different in this regard.

Miguel.

I notice that VGDotNet ( http://www.vgdotnet.com ) does not run well under Mono's GDI+ implementation. There seem to be only a handful of errors that keep it from running. The author says it runs 100% managed code.

It is a .NET vector graphics library; it might be a good test suite for working our bugs in Mono's GDI+ implementation along with Paint.NET.

This is a great list! Is there a site containing an index of existing mono (compat?) apps? I cant believe the mono team themselves dont have such a directory. This is the first list, over 5 entries, that I've seen. I could be blind, but I looked quite extensively.

Just read gnomefiles.org regularly. This is where most GTK# apps usually listed.

Mono really needs a IDE with a forms editor like VS.net or Delphi has.
It doesn't have to be winforms, GTK# or whatever would be fine.
The point is Mono needs a nice RAD environment in which to work.
I will praise the day I can create a new form, drop a button and a text edit on it, double click the button to create a event handler and add code to the buttons click event.

Is Mono installable yet?

why don't you use VS .Net to develop your mono apps? I think this is a stated milestone(?) by Miguel de Icaza (ON THIS VERY PAGE!):

" We are hoping to be feature complete by the time of the
Novell Brainshare conference. At that point we will start
running most popular Winforms applications to pinpoint the
bugs in our implementation and hopefully a few months later
release the final product.

Miguel."

>Is Mono installable yet?

just download the binary bundle, it installs it for you via a graphical wizard (no compilations).

Our policy is listed on our FAQ, like I said elsewhere
and a number of times, our legal council agreed that our
public position on patents in our FAQ reflected the state of
the industry and we were fine with it.


The person who asked you a question wanted to be reassured Miguel. Your quote above could have been much shorter with a "yes Mono is IP-safe".
Now if you typed 4 lines instead of 5 words, I think we can conclude that "Mono is IP-unsafe".

Right?

Our policy is listed on our FAQ, like I said elsewhere
and a number of times, our legal council agreed that our
public position on patents in our FAQ reflected the state of
the industry and we were fine with it.

Unfortunately Microsoft didn't want .Net to be like the rest of the industry, hence the way it is available through the ECMA but where Microsoft keeps their rights to it as their technology. The situation of the ECMA stuff being available through RAND (royalty-free licensing) only applies as long as Microsoft is a member of the ECMA - basically until people actually start using .Net.

As an aside, you can actually run COM servers on other platforms than Windows, including Linux, and get them to interoperate with COM servers produced with Visual Studio. The spec for COM is actually published. The only difference is that the extensions for Windows, including the GUI Windows Forms stuff, are closed off. .Net is in exactly the same position as COM with respect to getting it fully running on other platforms and yet people seem to think that it's different in some way.

So, hands up how many people here think that COM is an open standard that can reliably be used as the basis for desktop environments and technology on other platforms? Nope, didn't think so.

"why don't you use VS .Net to develop your mono apps?"

Cause it's commercial ?

<<Cause it's commercial ?>>

VS.NET 2005 Express is free for download.
http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/express/

"Unfortunately Microsoft didn't want .Net to be like the rest of the industry, hence the way it is available through the ECMA but where Microsoft keeps their rights to it as their technology."

how does the same scenario play out with their ISO standardization?

how does the same scenario play out with their ISO standardization?

ECMA is just a fast-tracking organisation to ISO. It doesn't make any difference.

"ECMA is just a fast-tracking organisation to ISO. It doesn't make any difference."

Are you saying ISO standard results in all the same concerns as some people's assetions regarding the ECMA standard? (David I'm assuming)

You might want to ask every other software author
whether they provide indemnity for software patents for
their products. Mono is no different in this regard.


Miguel,

Errr....

I actually know a company who offers "Indemnification for copyright infringement claims made by third parties against registered customers".

YES!!

Hummm...

It's called Novell by the way. You know it's the company you work for now, you remember, right ?

See: http://www.novell.com/licensing/indemnity/

Miguel, you're a joke. Sorry

Okay, I've sat and watched enough langauges. It doesn't amaze me how java boomed, and it doesn't amaze me how C# boomed. Its just like the wonderful world of Pascal. Why are we reinventing the wheel and not using the wheels out there?

Why can't people just use the standardised languages which have been around and evolved? C/C++, etc. etc. FORTRAN for the numerical libs of course.

The point is, yet another language has been created. Another langauge is here and another langauge again. I use BSD, and also know Novell is in charge of the MONO on BSD. What I don't et is why ew need 'yet' another language when the langauges out there are just as/maybe more efficient. Cost of programmer time? Okay if C++ is wasting time for 'you', then you don't need to program. It shows how you are a immature programmer and you don't need to be in the prorgamming world.

I've said enough of the truth, cheers.

Hello, I'am the GraphMokey programmer
keep cool Electricmew! ;-)

Electricmew<"Why are we reinventing the wheel and not using the wheels out there?"

cause .net is a good platform so we need a free .net

Electricmew<"Okay if C++ is wasting time for 'you', then you don't need to program"

dont you think that a lot of c# developer use C/C++ too (like me)?

Electricmew<"It shows how you are a immature programmer and you don't need to be in the prorgamming world."

I think you dont understand that in "free software" there is the word "free", i'am free to use what i want so dont play the dictator. if you dont like mono, dont use it, you are free too.


Electricmew<"I've said enough of the truth"

hum?...where? ;-)

Dear Omega,

I am aware of the copyright infringement indemnity that Novell offers. But copyright infringement is different than patent infringement.

Copyright infringement means that someone copied/lifed the code verbatim from one place to another.

Patent infringement means that an *idea* was copied.

Miguel.

SQL# For GTK# is another Mono/GTK# app that works on Mono 1.0.6 and Mono 1.1.4. It works on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows 2000/XP. It allows you to enter SQL commands and see the results.

http://forge.novell.com/modules/xfmod/project/?sqlsharpgtk

Here is it running on Max OS X
http://ftp.mfconsulting.com/pub/images/sqlsharpgtkOnMac.png