Submitted by Mono 1.1.13 has been ported to SkyOS. All mono assemblies for .NET 1.1 and .NET 2.0 have been ported as well. Porting Managed.Windows.Forms has begun and is almost finished. SkyOS’s lead developer, Robert Szeleney, was responsible for this difficult port. He has written an account of that process. “Porting Mono was not an easy task at all.”
Typo Thom. “robert Szeleney”. Thanks for publishing and congrats to Robert again
Man…
Another amazing achievement…
Congrats !
I wonder if Apple/Sun/Microsoft ever tried to hire Robert…
It would be a good deal, he alone is worth an army of demon coders
Robert, I don’t know you personally, but let me say – you are absolutely amazing at what you do/are doing. Keep up the excellent work, this is the first OS that has excited me in a long time (Since I got my copy of BeOS in the mail..)
As soon as more of the applications I need for business are ported (unfortunately I’m not a capable enough programmer to do it myself) I will surely be signing up for the beta to give it a whirl. I’d love to have a nice workstation OS to toss on all my terminals at my business!
wonderful coup for the os
Damn, he’s fast.
I’m suprised that Mono + assemblies got ported before a full java implementation, but considering the upswing in popularity for Mono… should I really be?
Its nice work, though. Reading the harrowing tale of how he got the port working is pretty cool.
Exciting this news is, log into my account I must.
That does it for me – I just paid for the beta program. Being a .NET developer by trade, this gives me hope that I can very easily (and quickly) start writing software for SkyOS.
Hah
… I knew you had to sooner or later 
Remember to read installation instructions before you install SkyOS
And enjoy
SkyOS.org has been OSNews’d. I have a mirror of the Mono Story and a screenshot, just that one single page, don’t try any links
http://tomasz.nukysrealm.net/debug/monostory.html
http://tomasz.nukysrealm.net/debug/mono.png
So what features does this bring? What does Mono do, and why is it good?
It doesn’t bring features, it brings software, and developers.
Think Java… what’s it good for? what features does it bring?
And, if you read the account of the implementation – you’ll see that this “challenge” of porting mono has improved SkyOS’ POSIX implementation and eliminated various memory leaks, etc. in the kernel mmap implementation.
Edited 2006-02-09 20:58
Mono is an open source implementation of C# and .NET, originally built for Linux but it has now been ported to numerous different operating systems. Microsoft’s .NET is only available on Windows.
Mono is an open source implementation of C# and .NET, originally built for Linux but it has now been ported to numerous different operating systems. Microsoft’s .NET is only available on Windows.
You mean it’s a compiler for C# and .NET code, right?
What I always wondered: does this mean you can only make Windows programs with Mono, or does it mean it’s like programming for Windows, but with differing API’s depending on what platform you code for?
Edited 2006-02-17 18:17
I want to be Robert Szeleney. </fanboy>
Seriously, I hope some day to be able to program like this man can.
@Lakedaemon:
I don’t remember where and can’t find it after some searching, but somewhere on the site Robert addresses this, saying he has had offers before but doesn’t take them, and won’t talk about them out of professionalism.
And finally, the site isn’t down for me… it all works perfectly, faster that most sites in fact.
I don’t remember where and can’t find it after some searching, but somewhere on the site Robert addresses this, saying he has had offers before but doesn’t take them, and won’t talk about them out of professionalism.
In an interview I conducted for OSNews with him back in 2004 [1] he said that. Here’s the relevant passage:
“Another thing that popped into my mind (seeing you seem to, well, code like hell): were you ever contacted by a major software company, in the lines of Microsoft, Red Hat, IBM etc.?
Yes, I have been contacted in the past by a few companies, but I’d prefer not to name them.”
[1] http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=7748
We need to know how does he get motivated like that! What a super coder. O_o
The donations to the code ransom showed that people wanted mono. Also, Robert is a fan of C#
Why do I get the impression that SkyOS is already way more capable than Zeta? How can suck a small team produce such results in this amount of time??
Anyway I am wondering if he is also going to work in some kind of Linux compatibility API that will enable big applications like Matlab and mathematica to run in his box…
One could say that because Robert originally wrote the kernel for SkyOS, he is most familiar with it’s inner workings – and thus he can quickly fix or change it as necessary for the next porting project.
I’m fairly certain YellowTab doesn’t have any developers who originally wrote the BeOS kernel or the rest of the system for that matter.
Also, SkyOS doesn’t have to maintain any backwards-compatibility with previous (BeOS) software – and therefore breaking binary compatibility, or removing APIs is still possible.
Otherwise, I think I agree – it seems like Robert has a serious passion for his OS, and it shows.
Well, actually….
In Version 3.X there WAS a linux emulation layer! Not sure if it still is in there though…
That’s for sure a big port with loads of work behind.
I reckon, Robert ‘s had a big load of debug sessions behind ere he’s got that running round. The blog item tells.
I like how SkyOS progresses. Not oversped but at a steady pace. A pity I canna give it time for testing anymore. My ongoing studies at university abide this.
Just go one like this, Robert. It’s fun watching your os grow.
I don’t know where Robert gets its energy… But he keeps on impressing me alot. He never sleep… He never sleep!
Seeing that SkyOS is still getting new features, it’s going to stay in Beta for a long time I would guess…
Mabe a code freeze would be good at some point. Only fixing bugs and cleaning the GUI to be able to get out with a final version.
Their is allways SkyOS 6.0 that he can work on after!
Keep up the good work!
Bringing mono to SkyOS is a great achievement and there are more benefits to this port that meets the eye :
As SkyOS got more POSIX compliant, with the implementation of mmap and other m-related functions,
future ports should be a little bit easier, faster and more stable.
So every effort spent in debugging/porting things/implementing kernel functions will pile up to the point where, one day, porting monstrous app like open office will be feasible (by a one man-coding army).
I bought the “beta” (actually, I bought SkyOS 5.0 and got the beta for free), and I’m thoroughly impressed with the work. SkyOS is an exciting project, it’s a project with a mission, and more importantly, Robert doesn’t just spend his time talking about what he’d like somebody else to do – he does it.
This achievement is not in the league of writing an operating system from scratch, but since he’s already done that, it’s a nice addition to his CV. It’s also a nice addition to our arsenal as programmers and users, and I for one am very excited about the possibility of writing Mono projects to compile for such a diverse range of operating systems.
Also note that as of now, Free Pascal has been ported too, which leaves us another choice in cross-platform programming. Lazarus, its Delphi IDE/framework should port relatively easy, at least using Gtk+ for a start, and a native version should come along.
A time to rejoice indeed!
because of the things he added to port this (mmap, shared memory, new pthread, random driver) a lot of ports should be a lot easier or even possible to port.
openssl,libgcrypt,gnutls,apache,svn, … come to mind at first
I used to visit skyos.org, just to check if mono was going to be ported. I had my doubts because Robert obviously have a LOT of things to do being a lead developer.
I think this is VERY good news for skyOS.
The pace of development for SkyOS is amazing especially considering that most of it seems to be done by one man. Robert Szeleney’s abilities seem to good to be true. I guess this goes to show how much might be learned by writing an OS from scratch by a truly talented programmer. I join the others in taking my hat off.
With various programming languages already available on SkyOS. Most open source projects should be portable. A Linux compatibility layer might be easier to create (upgrade-did someone say that one existed for a previous version?) than porting all of the existing Linux software, but some of the basic software seems to have been ported already or have native alternatives on SkyOS.
The proprietary applications are generally available on Windows as well as Linux. So, I would think that WINE would offer more benefits to SkyOS as a compatibility layer if it could be ported than a Linux compatibility layer would. Of course, a Linux compatibility layer would make WINE directly available, but running a program through two compatibility layers doesn’t seem like it would have terrific performance or predictable results.
WINE has matured tremendously recently after much of the groundwork (and an enormous amount of guesswork) seems to have been finished. WINE’s moving target seems to be slowing as MS pushes more .NET development. So, WINE should be even more viable in the future. With both WINE and Mono SkyOS would have increased access to Windows-centric software in addition to cross-platform products.
Robert may not be interested in WINE, and I know there are those that seem to continually argue against the use of WINE. I doubt that it’s even on the radar, but I really think that [the work of] porting WINE might offer some of the same benefits to SkyOS as what Mono did.
Hopefully it can be fully implemented soon so that a whole host of C# apps can be ported or developed. Just one question is this implementation of C# JIT or pre compiled?