Why Mono Is Desirable For Linux

[peperoni]

Is that meant to be English? I can't understand a word of it.

Oh, poor! It can't understand.It's so cute... Kitikitikitikitikiti!!!

[ciplogic]

What I'm trying to say is that it's fine to learn and use Mono but the problem that could arise is that if it becomes popular in the dev world (and I can easily see it as becoming so) then everybody will start writing in C# for linux. So most of the applications in linux will become C#. Now Microsoft tells us that we can use C# as it's like public domain and they can't do anything about it if people start writing VMs for their platform. But this is Microsoft we're talking about. I am not a lawyer but I know that they have armies of lawyers that they can at some point use to find a loophole in the law to take back C#. At that point, if linux becomes dependent on Mono, then we're fucked. That is all I'm trying to say. C# is a fine language but it comes with strings attached. If Microsoft sees it becoming too popular in the linux world they might get ideas and go back to their old tricks and ruin the platform.

I choose to view every good deed from Microsoft with suspicion given their previous behavior. This is why I do not encourage people to write for Mono in order to be cross platform but for Java and platforms.

Did you read the original article? Patents cannot attack the language as is, but a functionality. And most of the time languages do not have issues of patents, libraries do. So GCC C++ 11 do have possible risks in the way it implements futures (like await/async in C#) and it may have the same risks as Mono. In fact, if Microsoft will want the supremacy of C#, and as it guaranteed to .Net implementers the Community Promise to not sue them, seems that C++ is at higher risk, at least combined with GCC. The very worst case of blocking Mono will be a Dalvik like implementation for Mono, where the bytecode will be represented diferently, maybe it will run on top of LLVM. It may lose the compatibility with MSIL, but all the rest will work.

But even it would happen or not, this is paranoia, really!

[directhex]

Do you need equitable treatment?

It'd be nice.

If your arguments were logically consistent, you'd apply them evenly. Since they're bullshit excuses, you don't.

[directhex]

Oh, poor! It can't understand.It's so cute... Kitikitikitikitikiti!!!

Still not English.

And any "it's not my first language" excuses don't really apply, when ciplogic is ALSO from Spain, and manages to come across as entirely coherent and comprehensible.

[directhex]

Hmm..doesn't this make you wonder why is Microsoft trying so hard to get people's approval of C#? I mean since when do they do such things being nice and all?

Presumably because in 2012, their customers demand it. Same reason they're spending so much time on things like Linux support in Hyper-V. 2012's developers demand more visibility on their frameworks than 1999's did.

[o247492]

Presumably because in 2012, their customers demand it. Same reason they're spending so much time on things like Linux support in Hyper-V. 2012's developers demand more visibility on their frameworks than 1999's did.

It's sweet of you to try to sell a product to us we don't need or want just out of a sense of "justice", fighting all of the anti-Microsoft prejudice just because it's the right thing to do... However, even if the 2 of you make 1000 posts in this thread and finally manage to get the last word in, outlasting 1000s of people who think you're complete morons, I'm quite sure that you will have convinced exactly zero people to start using Mono.

Maybe your time would be better spent working on improving the codebase of Mono/Monodevelop so that they actually work, that would go much further towards convincing people to use it. OTOH, Wine has insane amounts of time, money, and effort invested in it, and it's still an utter failure. Therefore, there's no reason to think Mono will ever be good either, that time and effort is better invested in native Linux solutions.

[ciplogic]

It's sweet of you to try to sell a product to us we don't need or want just out of a sense of "justice", fighting all of the anti-Microsoft prejudice just because it's the right thing to do... However, even if the 2 of you make 1000 posts in this thread and finally manage to get the last word in, outlasting 1000s of people who think you're complete morons, I'm quite sure that you will have convinced exactly zero people to start using Mono.

Maybe your time would be better spent working on improving the codebase of Mono/Monodevelop so that they actually work, that would go much further towards convincing people to use it. OTOH, Wine has insane amounts of time, money, and effort invested in it, and it's still an utter failure. Therefore, there's no reason to think Mono will ever be good either, that time and effort is better invested in native Linux solutions.

First of all is obvious that we don't try to sell any product. Mono is free and most people get it for free. Even some people pay for it, they pay for a full toolset that gives a consistent experience to use it that worth the price (MonoTouch and Mono for Android), so is obvious that we don't sell. The numbers don't add up, I would grant to you that are more people complaining, but are obviously people that are neutral, including Michael, that he accepted to put the article (at least for controversy side), a lot of people that do not care if the last Humble Bundle embeds Unity and with it Mono.

At the end, we fight with the falsehoods that most people put against Mono, because we need a nice environment to work with, we want Mono applications, we want to use Linux as is. This is why we did not promote Wine in our talks. We don't want Windows to come on Linux, we want an easy to use language/platform that we are comfortable with and we see no reason to not be a part of Swiss knife developer tools on Linux.

The contention that is better to spend time improving Mono/Monodevelop it would imply that:
- Mono, MonoDevelop does not work and all Unity applications, Second Life, MonoTouch and so on, prove that they do
- we don't contribute to Mono, MonoDevelop directly or indirectly, which is also false. I compiled at least Mono runtime and takes some time, and to make it over all platforms as packaging is time consuming, so directhex is obviously contributing. As for me, my contributions are much smaller, but I a fairly important patch to Pinta (look in Pinta> Help About, for Ciprian Mustiata, and you will find me there), I reported bugs to MonoDevelop (like this link: http://answerpot.com/showthread.php?...project+errors )

At the end, why Wine is an utter failure? Don't you like to play games and if developers are not kind enough to spend time porting their applications (maybe because someone will say that they use Mono to make it happen and that's why is slow, not because of video drivers), to not have any other way than running them in Windows? As for me, as I'm not in myself a gamer, I see Wine even more important, I could switch to Linux for basic applications but there will be always an application that I would want to run it that is Windows only.

If you do think that Wine is not for you, please stay away of it, the same about Mono.
But what we can't stand, or at least I can't stand are the falsehoods. Are you afraid of Microsoft, fine, stay away of whatever you think Microsoft does. But don't say that people are paid to support Mono, or that Mono is slower than Dalvik, or that games run slow because they run on Mono. Claims come with at least some kind of evidence, not speculations. Just spend 1 minute in Google and find where you get the information from. Look for the source of your information, if there is a source, and is it credible?
Look this informative clip about sorting falsehoods: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdnZ1l5TxJk

[log0]

First of all is obvious that we don't try to sell any product. Mono is free and most people get it for free. Even some people pay for it, they pay for a full toolset that gives a consistent experience to use it that worth the price (MonoTouch and Mono for Android), so is obvious that we don't sell.

Wow you certainly would make a great salesman. You don't try to sell a product. People pay for it voluntarily because it is so awesome...
All I see is Xamarin trying to convince devs to use Mono/C# on Linux and Co so that they can cash them to be able to deploy their code on Android and Co. Please prove me wrong by listing free alternatives to MonoTouch/Mono for Android.

[directhex]

All I see is Xamarin trying to convince devs to use Mono/C# on Linux and Co so that they can cash them to be able to deploy their code on Android and Co.

You're deluded if you think the number of people who want to port their C# apps from the Linux desktop to Android or iOS is anything more than statistical noise.

What they're actually selling is a path to code sharing - keeping 80+% of your code base common across Android and iOS is something none of the default development environments offer. Buying Xamarin's products (rather than other things like Phonegap) enables that, plus code sharing with Windows Phone (for what little market share that's worth). If that means code sharing with existing desktop (inevitably Windows) apps, then all the better for the developer.

Xamarin isn't trying to convince anyone to use Mono/C# on Linux. They gave up. They keep their existing apps etc running - and the community continues to do its job of submitting patches and packages - but Xamarin is not a Linux desktop company by any stretch of the imagination.

Please prove me wrong by listing free alternatives to MonoTouch/Mono for Android.

That would depend on what, exactly, you're actually asking for. What would you consider "an alternative to MonoTouch"?

[ciplogic]

Wow you certainly would make a great salesman. You don't try to sell a product. People pay for it voluntarily because it is so awesome...
All I see is Xamarin trying to convince devs to use Mono/C# on Linux and Co so that they can cash them to be able to deploy their code on Android and Co. Please prove me wrong by listing free alternatives to MonoTouch/Mono for Android.

As for IDEs to develop Android, and as far as I know they don't cost a penny:
- IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition, you don't need any plugin
- Lazarus IDE
- Qt with Necessitas
- Mono if you compile it by your own. No one stops you doing this, and no one has the duty to give it for free integration with Visual Studio, MonoDevelop, to write a visual designer and so on
- any HTML5 application (yes, you have a browser in Android) and you have a lot of tools for doing this: JQuery/JQuery UI (for JS side), combined with Ruby on Rails for example, or Mono with MVC3/4 on server side

Note: Lazarus' integration with Android is alpha quality, and Qt/Necessitas is beta quality (at least in my view).

At the end, as you probably know: Android is not Linux, you cannot write for example Gtk applications, or if you can, please point to me the tutorial where I can do this. Or an X11 application, or an OpenGL (not OpenGL ES) one. So even the discussion that Xamarin sells tools for iOS or Android will not target Linux, excluding that paying customers that use MonoDevelop report bugs that will get into MonoDevelop Linux offerings.