Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 6th Oct 2008 10:37 UTC, submitted by John Mills
The Mono project has released Mono 2.0. As most of you will know, Mono is an open-source implementation of Microsoft's .NET framework for Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, and other operating systems. The 2.0 release comes packed with new features, the main ones being the compiler upgrade to C# 3.0 with support for LINQ, as well as the inclusion of ADO.NET 2.0, ASP.NET 2.0 and System.Windows.Forms 2.0. The release notes detail all the changes and new features.
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Member since:2005-07-06
Excuse my ignorance, but how useful is Mono for porting .NET apps to Linux without modifying the source? For example, Paint.NET would be a nice program to have under Linux. Can we just take the source and compile it with Mono without hacking the source?
As mentioned in the article (imagine that!), Paint.NET used PInvoke - that is, it calls into native Win32 code. To me, that is normally a huge mistake. Unfortunately, it is often necessary, as the .NET libraries do not provide everything you need. At times, you still need native code to get a particular task done. Thus, these call to native code would probably have to be "forked" for other execution environments like Linux and Mac.
Member since:2007-06-21
Excuse my ignorance, but how useful is Mono for porting .NET apps to Linux without modifying the source? For example, Paint.NET would be a nice program to have under Linux. Can we just take the source and compile it with Mono without hacking the source?
You don't need to recompile fully-managed .NET apps to get them to run on Linux under Mono. They will Just Work.
The problem is when a .NET application calls into native c libraries (unfortunately, Paint.NET does this, but people are working on a Linux port of the native library that Paint.NET uses).
Member since:2005-07-06
Paint.NET would be a nice program to have under Linux. Can we just take the source and compile it with Mono without hacking the source?
It all depends on whether the original program uses P/Invoke calls to native code dlls, or uses APIs that aren't supported yet. If not, there is a good chance that the binaries will run without change or recompile.
In the case of Paint.NET you are out of luck for now: There are a lot of P/Invoke calls but almost everything else works as of the new release - it's even shown in the release notes. It's funny that most everyone uses Paint.NET for an example when they are asking this question.
There aren't that many popular .NET apps for Windows either, or Java, or interpreted languages (the aforementioned are not interpreted). That's to be expected though. As with any platform in wide use, most Windows apps are not the "popular" type: They are either internal business apps, or tiny utilities that wouldn't need to be ported.
Member since:2005-07-27
Excuse my ignorance, but how useful is Mono for porting .NET apps to Linux without modifying the source? For example, Paint.NET would be a nice program to have under Linux. Can we just take the source and compile it with Mono without hacking the source?
Paint.NET makes extensive calls to Win32.
But luckily it has isolated all of that code into a library that can be swapped out. The Mono-Paint project on code.google.com has a reimplementation of that library.
As for other applications: out of the data that we received over the past year for about 6,000+ applications, 45% of them will work unmodified (no recompilation necessary, just run the binary directly) on Linux.
The others will require minimal changes. Its equivalent to porting software from Linux to MacOS or viceversa.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 15:53 UTC
The new WebKit Opera for Android has been released. "Opera 14 for Android is built on top of Chromium 26, with a total overhaul of the UI in native code, making it fit well with the latest Android design guidelines. Go get the build from Google Play or point your browser to m.opera.com, and give it a spin!"
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 22:43 UTC
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 21:50 UTC
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."More News »
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Member since:
2006-05-11
Excuse my ignorance, but how useful is Mono for porting .NET apps to Linux without modifying the source? For example, Paint.NET would be a nice program to have under Linux. Can we just take the source and compile it with Mono without hacking the source?