Why Mono Is Desirable For Linux

[ciplogic]

In other words, I'm not alone. This stems from Mono being a secondary implementation, with .NET as the main, supported implementation. Q: Why doesn't Microsoft just bring Mono to feature parity, dump .NET as we know it, and develop that at the supported implementation?

To put it bluntly, .Net also does not have feature parity with Mono. Like:
- if you write a Gtk# application, go to to Mono website to download the GTK# installer on Windows
- if you write using SIMD intrinsics, even you'll be using Mono.Simd, .Net version, it is made just to compile, but is done in software
- if you want a C# REPL console, you will go back to Mono's gsharp console
- if you need a compiler/runtimes that compiles C#, and is embeddable in all forms and shapes, this is Mono
- at last, if you want to fix an issue, you can do it, because is free/opensource software

Those features are features I thought in 5 minutes.

Why do you consider that Microsoft should go and make Mono to be on feature parity with .Net. If it would ever happen this, the same folks as you will say: why Microsoft tries to add things in Mono, certainly they are hiding something.

Anything not running Windows/.NET. You're either using APIs that happen to be implemented in Mono, or you're coding against .NET and only caring about Windows.

As for previous answer, there are things that are obviously Mono/Linux only, but why do you think that if you're running on Mono, you pick just the common subset that Mono and .Net share? If you do so, is fine, you make a portable application. But if you think at Tomboy, Banshee, and for many years MonoDevelop (which works on Windows just if you install Gtk#, discussed previously), Pinta were all Linux only software. All those software (and the older discontinued Beagle Search), were at a stage at least Linux only, targeting Linux only APIs, wasn't it so?
And if you take Mono on a wider context, you can target Cocoa#, MonoTouch, Android's frameworks, OpenGL (which is not supported in .Net, but in an independent translation like Tao or OpenTK), SDL (via Tao), and so on.
At the end, did you worked with Mono and you find no practical way to implement a Linux only application using C#, when MonoDevelop is the C# IDE that is best supported in Mac OS X and Linux, and shows to you that all those things are possible?

[o247492]

So let's hear your formal accusation, and your proof.

I hereby formally accuse you of being a shill. What are you going to do, punk? Get Microsoft to buy you a lawyer and sue me?

I'm sure that the Windows PC you're using to post from is easily hackable to gather evidence, as are your Windows Live and Hotmail accounts, as well as your company email address running on the Exchange server that Microsoft generously donated. All incredibly insecure and ripe for proof gathering, no doubt... If they wanted to keep your secrets a secret, they would've donated you a Linux server.

Not that anybody is going to take you seriously or start using Mono just because of your posts. I'm sure that the idea of sending you here came directly from the desk of Steve "1/10th the man Bill Gates was(and that's not saying much)" Ballmer. All that time, money and effort is wasted, nobody will ever take Mono seriously, and nobody dumb enough to use Mono is ever going to be smart enough write a worthwhile application with it. It's the paradox of trying to influence stupid people to do stupid things, at best you'll have an army of incompetent idiots at your disposal, while smart people continue to ignore you...

[directhex]

I hereby formally accuse you of being a shill. What are you going to do, punk? Get Microsoft to buy you a lawyer and sue me?

I'm sure that the Windows PC you're using to post from is easily hackable to gather evidence, as are your Windows Live and Hotmail accounts, as well as your company email address running on the Exchange server that Microsoft generously donated. All incredibly insecure and ripe for proof gathering, no doubt... If they wanted to keep your secrets a secret, they would've donated you a Linux server.

Not that anybody is going to take you seriously or start using Mono just because of your posts. I'm sure that the idea of sending you here came directly from the desk of Steve "1/10th the man Bill Gates was(and that's not saying much)" Ballmer.

Oh yeah, Me and Billy G and Stevey B (as he likes to be called) go way back. We meet up at the company basketball court to shoot some hoops, then go and sip company root beer out of company personalized glasses, whilst sitting in company diamond-encrusted thrones. There, they told me "directhex, you must save us! Bing is failing in search, Windows 8 is shaping up to be a disaster, nobody cares about Windows Phone. The only hope for our beloved company is if you infiltrate Phoronix forums, under cover of darkness, and post positive comments about a Free Software implementation of a developer framework we write. Otherwise, we might not be around in two years!"

Paranoid freak.

All that time, money and effort is wasted, nobody will ever take Mono seriously, and nobody dumb enough to use Mono is ever going to be smart enough write a worthwhile application with it. It's the paradox of trying to influence stupid people to do stupid things, at best you'll have an army of incompetent idiots at your disposal, while smart people continue to ignore you...

It's funny, y'know. The impotent rage of the anti-Mono cult continues on Linux. And to an extent, their jihad was successful. Meanwhile, objective developers on other platforms are looking at Mono and "holy shit, this is awesome" is the reply. Mono-powered Unity3D is the number one game engine for mobile - and as well as enabling Linux games for all, hence so many Linux-centric Kickstarter campaigns - is now the default engine in the Wii U SDK. Mono is the beginning and end of Sony's new Playstation Mobile SDK, targeting the Vita console and several Sony and other branded Android devices. Mono's being used to bring other games, such as Bastion and its 100+ awards, to Linux. And yet here you are, the expert in all things, proclaiming that nobody cares about Mono.

Know why Xamarin doesn't bother with the Linux desktop anymore? You. People like you. The angry nerds whose narrative says "Mono sucks, it's evil, anyone who uses it is stupid, blah blah blah". And elsewhere in the land of computers, it's winning non-stop.

Why is Mono desirable? Because the body of code targeting Mono (not Microsoft.NET; Mono) is going up, its mindshare on every single other platform is going up, and to attract those developers to Linux, they need to be accommodated.

Nobody's ever going to rewrite Bastion in PyGame.

[directhex]

You're blind if you don't see why there is apprehension in this community against Microsoft. If you don't see something so blatant and obvious, words are lost on you. One's actions represent who they are, and Microsoft's actions have brought them this.

Of course I see why people are apprehensive about Microsoft. I'm saying blind hatred against Microsoft in all cases regardless of context is moronic. This isn't a unique stance. Linux Torvalds, and Greg Kroah-Hartman have both found themselves needing to point it out, to attempt to bring a little sanity to a sea of nerd rage.

Oh please. These corporations don't control what APIs are written and how they're exposed. They're not the drivers, they're the passengers. And Microsoft is the entity behind the wheel.

You seem very well versed on the ECMA standardization process. No, wait, the other thing: blissfully unaware.

In other words, I'm not alone. This stems from Mono being a secondary implementation, with .NET as the main, supported implementation. Q: Why doesn't Microsoft just bring Mono to feature parity, dump .NET as we know it, and develop that at the supported implementation?

Because they don't want to? And they've been making increasingly large code dumps of .NET code under Free licenses, to not only enable their users to inspect their code, but to also allow alternative implementations (read: Mono) feature parity. The process is taking time, but little by little, .NET is switching to Free Software.

• ASP.NET MVC
• ASP.NET MVC 2
• ASP.NET MVC 3
• ASP.NET MVC 4
• Razor template engine
• Dynamic Language Runtime
• Entity Framework
• F#
• IronPython
• IronRuby
• Microsoft.NET Micro Framework

Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head

Anything not running Windows/.NET. You're either using APIs that happen to be implemented in Mono, or you're coding against .NET and only caring about Windows.

So, shock horror, do the former. Don't use WPF, and job jobbed, more or less. You think I've ever written software for Windows/.NET?

It is not in Microsoft's best interest for developers to more easily deploy to other platforms. The conflict of interest here is clear. Is it really all that unreasonable for developers to be wary of this?

Who cares what is or is not in Microsoft's best interests?

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...

So what is the directly comparable scenario for your "fool me once" here?

[ciplogic]

(...) C# is a nice language, the only problem is that we don't need it.

So if you don't need it, it does not exclude others to need it, right? I need it and I'm grateful if a guy with a directhex name or not made packages of Mono for the beloved Ubuntu to start Gnome-Do and MonoDevelop

There already is java and python as equivalents and C/C++ for low level. Why all this love for C#? It's like I invent a new language call it Balls#, make it similar to a popular programming language only a little better, then push it to my mortal enemies and tell them they need it and that they're old language is shit use mine. Of course I still keep control of the language and can kill it off whenever I can and thus they're applications are under my control. This sounds like microsoft in its glory days with embrance, extend and extinguish applied to programming languages.

So you admit that C# is a mix of all great features of low level and of high level languages (you were mentioning that C# is a blend of all great languages in their owns: Java, Python and low level C++). You also admitted that those small things may be needed, and for an user, C# can give a blissful experience.
Of course all modern languages are Turing machines, meaning that most likely everything you can do with Python, Java, C# or C++ you can simulate to some extend just with C. C++ is just a bit nicer to write classes, but you can use C for that. Templates are a way a bit nicer to the macros guaranteeing type safety, but they can be done with C. And so on.

By controlling the virtual machine and library they basically become the masters of the applications' destinies.

What if tommorow microsoft says some important libraries (used especially in linux) are deprecated and removes them from .NET? Will Mono fork or will they follow the .NET masters? Microsoft can slowly drive this language into the ground if they want to so moving more and more applications to C# will be a bad move. Microsoft are not a trustworthy company!!! Get it? We cannot trust them! They even did illegal things for which they were found guilty! Would you do business with a criminal just because he says he's changed? Microsoft has been evil so we can expect this while C# thingy to be just another evil ploy from them.

Now don't give me that bullshit list with the companies that 'control' the language. We both know it's bullshit and it's only Microsoft on that list. The rest are irelevant.

They are not, if there is an alternate implementation, like Mono. Microsoft is evil mantra, doesn't change the status of Mono. Say to me a C++ implementation that you use and it is not mostly guided by evil corporations. For the reality sake, the master of C++11 commitee was an Microsoft employee: Herb Sutter (http://herbsutter.com/), to not say that C++ was created as C by an evil At&t

C# brings nothing important and comes with serious strings attached. Do not use it! Microsoft has fucked people before. What makes you think this time their intentions are good? Don't listen to Miguel de Icaza! He even tried to get to work for Microsoft! For all we know Xamarin could be Microsoft pet project and Miguel Ballmer's bitch! Think about it now they brought C# to Android. Android already had Java it didn't need C# but yet they invested resources in it. They're trying to get users to write for C# instead of Java. It has Microsoft back to it's old ways (as if it ever left them) written all over it! C# is the new EEE on Java assault!

"They're trying to get users to write for C# instead of Java" - my view: you're insane. Did you wrote modern C# and modern (at least as of 2006 or 2008) Java? You will be struck by how many differences are in the way you express code. C# with Lambdas, Linq and Generics is so close with Java programming style as is Python with Javascript.
Android does not have Java, but a separate implementation, named Dalvik. If you are unsure about this ask Sun in 199x-2001 when they attacked Microsoft and Microsoft removed their JVM out of Windows. Also ask Oracle as they own Java, if is a better haven to write Java code on Android or C#/Mono. Android's Java is the reason why you should write C#: the Android's "java' implementation virtual machine is a mostly interpreted VM that traces small parts of mathematical code, it does not inline properties and small getters/setters, it does not inline reflection code, but mostly mathematical code. Mono's C# implementation is mostly a compiled program with end-to-end compiled or JIT code generation, meaning no sluggishness interpretation.
What it would matter if Miguel wanted to work for Microsoft. Would it make it better if KHTML developers worked for Apple, or CUPS developers worked for Apple? Are you not using Google Chrome for that? Or you're not printing anymore?

As a note: ad-hominem shows in general the poorness of your arguments. And certainly reflects your level of education (For all we know Xamarin could be Microsoft pet project and Miguel Ballmer's bitch!). Making speculations make me to think that if you would be a serious Linux user (I hope for the sake of my sanity you're not), I would buy Windows licence (or a Mac as Miguel did) just to stay away about those deluded and crazy people.

[peperoni]

As C# and .NET were the master move of M$ to ban all IDE companies from windows, no mater who lost ( they also banned all Visual C++, Visual Basic, Visual FoxPro, Borland C++, Pascal, ..., developers), I think they won't have mercy when .NET not be necessary. M$ is about earning money, their money. All Windows developers are only puppets. Fortunately, Linux, C, C++, and others have been there for decades, with no changes, to insure all professionals that have worried for themselves. Linux is win-win while others are win-????. The only I know is that I've been coding more than a decade for living, and another one for passion, and I don't see future in a platform that outcast professionals at will.

Also I think a crappy .NET implementation in Linux is dessirable to M$ (and if it divides Linux developpers, the best) because for them it was always the same thing 'not to be the best, but the only one'.

[ciplogic]

Are you trying to tell me that C# isn't trying to be a better java and it's something completely different?

Of course not. Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCVNpwXijVQ
Andrew states that C# wanted to be best environment to do Windows programming. So it took things form Java, Delphi and so on. This was about .Net 1.1. As I posted the year of 2006 to 2008, is clear that Java right now tries to copy C# (like Project Lambda in Java 8), but the differences are in my opinion greater than Ruby and Python.

You're hallucinating. Dalvik is the vm which is different from the java vm, but the languages are the same (java 1.6). In android they got rid of swing and awt and added their own GUI tools (would you have wanted Swing on a phone?), but other than that you have the library that you have in java SE. Another idiocy you stated, dalvik is slow. They added a JIT at 2.2 if I remember correctly and since it's a register based vm it might even end up faster then the standard stack based java vm. And yes it does inline stuff, not just setters and getters but much more. Sun attacked Microsoft because Microsoft was evil trying to EEE them. See? EVIL? Get it? Microsoft were the bad guys!

Dalvik is faster, do you have any numbers? All numbers you can find online show that Mono even in the early previews (without LLVM and Generational GC) were faster than Dalvik with JIT.
Stack vs register based VM: you're right if you will write an interpreter: you do less copies with a register based VM and push always on stack, anyway, you miss just one "small detail", the fact that the JIT virtual machines like .Net or Mono, they take the register based VM and assign to it virtual registers. In fact even Dalvik does the same, the DEX creator starts from .class files (which are stack based) and assigns registers to it, doesn't it? But the reason why Dalvik is slower, is not simply because Dalvik has a JIT, Mono has a JIT, so it means that both are fast. It is simply because the Dalvik JIT technique is named "Tracing JIT", which optimizes smartly just short sections of the program, that are used often, instead of the entire method, when the Mono does just the opposite. The method based JIT has more optimizations opportunities, and give at the end better numbers. This is admitted even by Google engineers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ls0tM-c4Vfo

Miguel has recently blasted the linux desktop. Combined with the fact that the guy has started Mono and has some links to microsoft makes me think that maybe he isn't such a good guy towards linux (not anymore anyway). And of course this matters in the argument. If you found out that he was on microsoft's payroll to push mono on linux to fuck linux over would you not care?

Dear BO$$, was in your mind ever Miguel a good guy for Linux? When he made for example Moonlight, or when he wanted to make possible for a software package to open Microsoft's Excel's OpenXML document?
But in the end, I don't care about Miguel and his preference over Mac OS, Windows 8 or Linux, I care about tools I'm running to run on Linux. I want applications I'm writing to be able to run on Linux. As I'm writing a lot more C# that I write C++ (even I know a lot of C++), I obviously want a mature C# implementation. I don't want to provide WPF, or any other Windows only APIs, even it would be great to be there, but I want to have not a crippled toolset that runs well. I want that Mono/Unity games to run on Linux too. I want video drivers to work on my AMD 7640M video card. All small pieces make Linux to be functional and a target for software development. Removing one, at least one that I use to use, for ideological and most times unfounded, when there are technical reasons to have this technology, is wrong.
I don't see anyone complaining to remove the Linux kernel as it may include a patent attack because of HiperV, or LibreOffice because it may attack techniques opening Microsoft Office documents, so why the flack on Mono?

[ciplogic]

As C# and .NET were the master move of M$ to ban all IDE companies from windows, no mater who lost ( they also banned all Visual C++, Visual Basic, Visual FoxPro, Borland C++, Pascal, ..., developers)

How C# ban IDE companies? Did Java IDEs disappear for example (I use a free IDE released in 2012: IntelliJ IDE or Eclipse 4)? Or Pascal one? Lazarus in years released its Lazarus 1.0 IDE. To not say about Embarcadero's Delphi. Visual Basic!? or Visual Fox Pro? You mean about their competition? There are no commercial VB IDEs? I notice there is Gambas IDE and other smaller IDEs. If you mean that there is no migration path from VB code to future, there are. Visual Studio up-to 2008 will import VB project and it will convert automatically as a VB.Net project. So in this way you can run it on Mono!
At the end, there were companies banning IDEs, and this company is Apple, isn't it so? XCode is the way to make phone applications! On Windows/Linux you are free to use tens of IDEs, from Python, Java based, .Net based, C++ based, Pascal based, VB based, and so on. So if you want to direct hate, please make an Apple hate post, there will be Apple fanboy to disagree, but if is about blaming someone, Apple seems a better target for me.

[peperoni]

How C# ban IDE companies? Did Java IDEs disappear for example (I use a free IDE released in 2012: IntelliJ IDE or Eclipse 4)? Or Pascal one? Lazarus in years released its Lazarus 1.0 IDE. To not say about Embarcadero's Delphi. Visual Basic!? or Visual Fox Pro? You mean about their competition? There are no commercial VB IDEs? I notice there is Gambas IDE and other smaller IDEs. If you mean that there is no migration path from VB code to future, there are. Visual Studio up-to 2008 will import VB project and it will convert automatically as a VB.Net project. So in this way you can run it on Mono!
At the end, there were companies banning IDEs, and this company is Apple, isn't it so? XCode is the way to make phone applications! On Windows/Linux you are free to use tens of IDEs, from Python, Java based, .Net based, C++ based, Pascal based, VB based, and so on. So if you want to direct hate, please make an Apple hate post, there will be Apple fanboy to disagree, but if is about blaming someone, Apple seems a better target for me.

First. I don't work for M$ neither A$, so I'm not going to compare them. They are all about earning money strategies, and about not to be the best, but the only one. Regarding the choices developers had when M$ introduced .NET, I don't think that Gambas and Lazarus are real options. Embarcadero started to make their path through .NET, and as for the Visual Studio importation assistant, it's an adventure in large projects, and in practice most companies wrote their product from scratch.
My experience is this. When M$ moved to .NET it left all C/C++ with the pants down. They changed the IDE so C/C++ developers saw their coding tools changed. As for M$ they also banned C/C++ developers from Windows and their mobile platforms which for that time had to be programmed with Visual C++ Embedded (they made then a master headshot I would say!). As for me I saw me forced to move to C#, since I get sick when I see aslongasayearvisualbasiccode. Now, I'm returning to C++ thanks Linux is maturing.
The thing is: M$ will support C# as long it be useful for them. After that they will outcast all C# developers to a new illsellverywell platform. For that time some of us would have several children and no time to study and switch. Then we would think why the hell haven't we learned C/C++ since they have been there for decades!

[o247492]

To all of the Microsoft-sponsored propaganda artists, I present to you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace_extend_extinguish

Which all of us Linux folks are quite aware of. Of course, you'll argue that's the distant past, and the "new Microsoft" loves Linux, and wants what's best for her.

Nobody is ever going to trust Microsoft, and rightfully so. And there's nothing you can do to change that. The average Fox News viewer can be easily influenced to believe the most impossible of ideas(cutting taxes to increase tax revenue? akin to taking a wage cut to pay off your credit cards?), but the average Fox News viewer has one-half the IQ of you average Linux developer, so you may want to pursue a different strategy rather than assume what trickery works on people with an IQ of 75 will also work on people with and IQ of 150.