opinions on mono

SavageMessiah · 2004-03-24 02:20:59

I'm very new to linux, having first tried out Red Hat 9 a few months ago. I recently rearranged my room, and now I can play on my #2 box without having to haul my lazy ass across the room. This reignited my urge to play, yadda yadda, o nto the point.

Two things are keeping me from using linux 100%: I program in VB .NET and games

Mono was exactly what I was waiting for. Even if I have to switch to C# (not a big jump from VB . NET when you get down to it) I'll be on this like a fat boy on cake. The speed that it's being developed and the maturity of the completed components is pretty impressive. At this point I could write a few command line C# apps in windows and run them on linux. This is cool.

As I've become more and more disilusioned with MS OSes, I've been becoming more impressed with the capabilities of .NET. It's kinda a sad state of affairs, but my dillema may finally end.

Soooo, anyone else as excited about this as I am? Or is the fact that it's a MS-developed API to much for you to stomach?

PS Erm, I seem to have lost the ability to spell. Oh well, that's college for you.

steelerguy · 2004-03-24 04:09:31

I have been using Linux full time at home for about 2 years now. Since I am a sys admin most of my coding is done in perl, or bash/sh so using Linux for that has not been a problem.

My biggest hangup was gaming. Once I finished Castle Wolfenstein and MOHAA there were no games I felt very compelled to boot into Windows for. Plus I could still play Quake 3 based games like Urban Terror and then Neverwinter Nights finally came out with their Linux port so I was good to go for awhile.

Due to lack of interest in current games and to be honest, lack of time (..or is it that I am finally getting old..hmmm) I have not really even worried about games...but...

Doom 3 should be coming out in a few weeks and from what I hear around the camp fire there will be a Linux installer right on the disk. This is a very good thing.

Half Life 2 will also be coming out in a few months. As far as I know they have no plans to offer a Linux client. This is a very bad thing. Now I still have a HD with Windows on it in my computer for my wife to use Quark when she is no on her Mac, but I really find it kind of distrubing that Valve is so willing to ignore the Linux gaming community. I am very tempted to just say screw them and not give them my money if they don't choose to offer me the choice of what OS I want to use, especially when id has more or less embraced Linux. So I may not every play what promises to be a very good game because I have a feeling I am going to refuse to get off my soap box!

So this had absolutely nothing to do with mono and it is probably in the wrong forum category. Oh well, I guess I had a rant in me.

andy · 2004-03-24 12:59:00

Actually, the two posts may have more in common as one may think ;-) ...

@steelerguy, I am not planning on playing HL2 for that very reason that Valve ignores Linux clients. And with Doom3 and FarCry there are enough contenders for Linux (According to a live interview on TV with one of the FarCry guys, they will be putting out a Linux client). HL(1) only runs with Wine(X) and apparently pretty well. Maybe, eventually, HL2 will be runing with Wine(X), too. But when Valve looks at this situation, they clearly must be saying "Hey, it runs pretty well under Wine - why bother with a native version".

While I am not totally against Wine, this is one of the major counter arguments against Wine : the discouragment for companies to develop Linux games.

And here the Mono .NET problem enters. The biggest counter argument against Mono is more or less the same : it encourages people to use MS controlled technolgy.

@SavageMessiah, you, of course, explained the very exciting arguments in favour of .NET.

I myself don't care about .NET/C#/Mono really (So why am I answering anyways :? ...) but if you are happy with it go for it ! AL does have Mono and Mono intersted users, so AL maybe good for you.

SavageMessiah · 2004-03-24 17:42:13

@steelerguy I'll probably end up keeping an XP and a 98 partition around for new and old games, respectivelly, but I think I'll be switching to linux full-time pretty soon. I hadn't heard that Doom 3 would be linux-happy. Hooray!

@andy I think the coolest part of mono is that they're taking MS stuff and making it better as it includes a bunch of libraries that MS neglected. I have a feeling that the final mono will be miuch more powerful than .NET. Really the only thing MS has control over is the API standard, everything else is in the hands of the mono guys, so I'd say that it's pretty much MS-corruption free .

As for AL being for me... as soon as I'd figured out how to set up all my hardware I decided that my distro hunt was over before it had begun

zeppelin · 2004-03-25 10:17:23

ok you can get monodoc and modmono and xsp from the incoming
ftp://www.archlinux.org/incoming/

gtk-sharp from the TUR
and mono is in pacman 's defaults REPO

mono has vb.net !! [am I so wrong?] it is called monovb

@andy, I have read a lot of text about this:
And here the Mono .NET problem enters. The biggest counter argument against Mono is more or less the same : it encourages people to use MS controlled technolgy.

and I never was conviced! Using Kaffe VM to write JAVA encourages someone to use SUN's VM?
Mono and DotGNU started and want to replace the ROTOR (MS.net)

one can program and run in .NET and not even have a microsoft's technology (aka Un*x) on his pc, or he can have only windows and then use SharpDevelop and Mono to do the trick!
so at least explain what you're saying because throwing sth like that is not always a good idea.

Mono and DotGNU SHOULD go after .NET because what microsoft is everywhere saying is: "windows run .net services so windows is a better solution for servers." GNU/Linux is ahead in the server's battle, but without these efforts, it is going to lose those too.

andy · 2004-03-25 10:49:43

zeppelin wrote:

@andy, I have read a lot of text about this:

so at least explain what you're saying because throwing sth like that is not always a good idea.

Well, shouldn't you then already know all the explanations ? ;-)

Anyways, I was saying that this is the general counter argument (and that it is simialr to the counter argument to Wine(X) ). I was not saying that I myself was thinking like that. I said, I myself don't really care about C#/Mono/etc.

But one piece I lately read, which influenced my post was this :
http://theregister.co.uk/content/4/35481.html
I know, that The Register is somewhat controversial. Also note, that said article is Opinion and covering a bit more ground.
I think he has some intersting points but please don't make me defend him. Especially since - as you said - Java is in a similar position. The difference, though is, that Sun is not a monopoly.

zeppelin · 2004-03-25 12:44:44

andy wrote:

The difference, though is, that Sun is not a monopoly.

Am I right or not?
Sun's JAVA was a monopoly which broke with .NET

I never understood why the oss Community loves Sun. if SUN was #1 company {like ms} it would do the same thing.
Read this: http://news.osdir.com/article491.html

ok after reading that, think also this:
Netscape Navigator = Sun's JAVA VM
Microsoft Internet Explorer = Microsoft's .NET

I'm not proud that ms won because it used it's OS. But that the rules of the market, and US didn't do much. EU slapped MS a bit.
anyways.
oh and yet another myth: GPL allows forks and forks are bad.
Well those guys should go and visti Mozilla.org that nowadays is a better browser than IE [but it took many many years] because Netscape didn't realize that fast enough. Sadly, Sun doesn't read the Netscape's story...

luckily, Mono has IKVM [compiles JAVA in mono il code], so bye bye sun [too bad].
also there is python for mono under heavy development. [read my leaps: like Jython]

the guy tha wrote the register article is so sure about what he is saying, and all others are fool:

http://www.dotgnu.org/danger.html [this is by Microsoft's money??]

Dusty · 2004-03-25 15:22:14

I don't know why the open source community used to like Sun, but I do know that without us, Sun would be going nowhere a lot faster than they are. I believe that Sun will eventually completely embrace open source, at which time they and IBM will be the business front end to the open source backend.

If Sun doesn't do this, they will possibly fail; they seem to have made a lot of big changes in the past few months. I'm not so impressed with what Sun has been as to what they will likely be.

I also believe that if and when the Java language is open sourced, most other languages will become obsolete, but I'm quite biggoted in that respect...

Dusty

zeppelin · 2004-03-25 20:27:51

a)Blackdown is not an open source alternative of JAVAVM. it is java better compiled for linux [before a year or so Sun's was compiled with an old version of gcc and blackdown was the only solution]

b) Sun just dropped the case of opening javaVM as IBM ESR and others have asked. [that goes about the 'new' sun being formed]. Of course it 's only a matter of time until the economics of java dept start to remind to java the Netscape 's case. that will happen even more clear [even to the user] about one year after Longhorn ships. [with all that Apostosis so well describes].

c) Sun is NOT and never will be a 'better' company than Microsoft. It just acts this way [giving OpenOffice for example] because noone can beat Microsoft if it goes closed source. The name "open source" was made by ESR and others so companies that always come second [call me SUN] are more likely to join the effort [for their money] of Open Source Linux. Of course Linux kernel is GPL but the GPL thing is being violated every day.. because everything links to the kernel in the end so a gpl kernel like linux can't [normally] run non-free software. Linus has said that of course there is a limit in that thing of 'linking' that GPL mentions. GNU seems to agree [because lost the HURD battle]

d) There are no good companies [don't worry I'm not a communist or sth] but that's reality.

e) [as I said in my previous post] in the end javavm is likely to go opensource, and at that time javavm will come AGAIN second. [now that is #1 comparing to .net it REMAINS CLOSED-SOURCE].
it took Mozilla 3 years to regain the lost field and become better than IE. I (eventhough a Mono/DotGNU enthousiast) hope that SUN will realize it quicker than Netscape did.

f) of course there are anti-trust laws. in EU ms has to pay. in US it made a compromise with the court and payed less [that's america] and that's reality. So eventhough SUN can accuse MS that longhorn should not ship with .NET or if they do they should ship with JAVAVM too, at the time they get to court, guess what will have happend?
[http://amo.net/IEVSNS/]

I'm not guessing the future here. This is going to happen mathematically if SUN continues this way. SUN thinks because JAVA is here back from the 93 that it can stay and the .NET propaganda of Microsoft.

of course if America did the same things that EU did some days ago, then the things would be more severe for MS's monopoly.
But read this and then you will understand the whole game between us president and microsoft (who was a sponsor btw)
about the sponsoring click here

Major Campaign Sponsors (2000)
Republican Party
* AT&T -- $2,702,871
* Global Crossing -- $967,293
* Microsoft -- $1,586,635
* Philip Morris -- $2,124,562
Democratic Party
* AT&T -- $1,924,545
* Global Crossing -- $1,261,152
* Microsoft -- $1,276,413 --- less money
* Goldman Sachs -- $1,291,975

* just a note: all links are respected google results. if you think I'm driving you to result, then you can have your own search on Google or elsewhere and find out the truth yourself. I'm not making politics [that's not my purpose here] but the economics [we're discussing here] have a lot to do with political life in general. thank you for your understanding

back to our subject:
Microsoft says 3 things:
"windows run xml services based on .net"
"you can write .net application in Visual Studio"
"you have MSDN"

Visual Studio is the best IDE ever existed.
MSDN is the best site for all-grades of programmers.
so this is honey to the programmers that is very important.

the point is that even SUN starts to realize all that:
i) they started righting migration guidelines from .NET to J2EE
ii) http://www.theserverside.com/news/threa … d_id=23953

or as Lennon would say:

You can go to church and sing a hymn,
Judge me by the colour of my skin,
You can live a lie untill you die,
One thing you can't hide is when you crippled inside.

thank you for your attention

zeppelin · 2004-03-26 23:32:40

http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/let-java-go-2.html

Dusty · 2004-03-27 04:38:50

zeppelin wrote:

d) There are no good companies [don't worry I'm not a communist or sth] but that's reality.

Excellent point... companies are like stones, they have no quality about them. There are no good stones or bad stones, except in the eyes of the people that hold them.

I hate it when I feel the need to get political. Soul-sucking habit, and I do it all too often, especially when related to computers, programming and open source. For me, what should be the simple truth is that what *any* company *or* open source developer does is none of my business. period.

What is the truth for me is that I argue about things that I don't *really* care about to matter. I'm just a chronic arguer. *sigh*

Dusty

zeppelin · 2004-03-27 11:00:29

For me, what should be the simple truth is that what *any* company *or* open source developer does is none of my business. period.

well I have to disagree here. in a community one can critisize the other. if you read ESR comments you will see that he doesn't attack SUN for example, but he says: "you say you are an open source friend, proove it!". to push a company is not a bad idea, because even stones can be moved

economy has to do with politicis. politics are everywhere, but I don't think that here is the right to discuss politicics [the purpose of these forums, are ArchLinux]. I 'll only say this: " us citizens, the world is depending on your votes. look at your economy and plz remember words like 'cooperation' and 'civil rights' thank you"
well ok. stop! @@

ASP.NET Overtakes JSP and Java Servlets SUN plz consider waking up too!

Arch Linux

#1 2004-03-24 02:20:59

opinions on mono

#2 2004-03-24 04:09:31

Re: opinions on mono

#3 2004-03-24 12:59:00

Re: opinions on mono

#4 2004-03-24 17:42:13

Re: opinions on mono

#5 2004-03-25 10:17:23

Re: opinions on mono

#6 2004-03-25 10:49:43

Re: opinions on mono

#7 2004-03-25 12:44:44

Re: opinions on mono

#8 2004-03-25 15:22:14

Re: opinions on mono

#9 2004-03-25 20:27:51

Re: opinions on mono

#10 2004-03-26 23:32:40

Re: opinions on mono

#11 2004-03-27 04:38:50

Re: opinions on mono

#12 2004-03-27 11:00:29

Re: opinions on mono

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