MONO (.net on Linux) and 3rd party component vendors
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John Cardinal wrote:
This coupled with the increasing possibility that people may start jumping ship to Linux as an alternative to upgrading to Vista
I'm all for supporting Mono if you think there are potential customers there, but I'm thinking the number of people switching to avoid Vista is not going to be substantial enough to worry about. The average user hasn't been exposed to all the FUD about Vista that the tech community has. They also haven't been exposed to Linux.
if(!curlies){ return; }
Joe-blow-windows-user will only change over to Vista when they buy a new machine. Joe-blow-technical-user will probably keep XP because "it works". Only devs and bleeding edge users will buy/install vista for the first year. Almost nobody will switch to Linux because of Vista, especially folks in the first two groups I mentioned. Boot note: I just installed Fedora Core 6, and it went smooth as butter - it even recognized my shiney new nVidia 8800GTX without so much as a hiccup. No other currently available distro can do that.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001 -
Joe-blow-windows-user will only change over to Vista when they buy a new machine. Joe-blow-technical-user will probably keep XP because "it works". Only devs and bleeding edge users will buy/install vista for the first year. Almost nobody will switch to Linux because of Vista, especially folks in the first two groups I mentioned. Boot note: I just installed Fedora Core 6, and it went smooth as butter - it even recognized my shiney new nVidia 8800GTX without so much as a hiccup. No other currently available distro can do that.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
Joe-blow-windows-user will only change over to Vista when they buy a new machine. Joe-blow-technical-user will probably keep XP because "it works".
Yes.
John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
I just installed Fedora Core 6, and it went smooth as butter
:cool:
If you try to write that in English, I might be able to understand more than a fraction of it. - Guffa
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John Cardinal wrote:
MONO project which is .net under Linux and it's very close to full .net 2 support.
...and of course the "real" .NET is at version 3 and rushing towards 3.5 or whatever it is going to be called at Orcas. IMHO, Microsoft is pouring new features into .NET at the rate that Mono just can't keep up with given the resources they have.
I don't agree for two reasons: 1) Novell is fully behind the MONO project now and pouring resources into it 2) Aside from the fact that .net 3 is on the mono projects roadmap, I have yet to find a truly important feature in it for commercial software development.
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John Cardinal wrote:
This coupled with the increasing possibility that people may start jumping ship to Linux as an alternative to upgrading to Vista
I'm all for supporting Mono if you think there are potential customers there, but I'm thinking the number of people switching to avoid Vista is not going to be substantial enough to worry about. The average user hasn't been exposed to all the FUD about Vista that the tech community has. They also haven't been exposed to Linux.
if(!curlies){ return; }
We don't target average users, we target business users and there is a *lot* of buzz out there and some real world examples of business users jumping ship already. Be that as it may, I don't seriously believe that Linux will take huge market share away from Microsoft any time soon, but as a business person it makes sense to not ignore an increasing market and if my app can just be copied to linux and run then it makes even more sense. Sure it's leading edge but if people start to demand it in significant numbers I don't want to be caught by surprise. For the average user though, some day, when they go into a computer store and can buy a pc with Linux that runs all their apps for a few hundred dollars less than a comparable windows system it might be the tipping point. And believe me I'm no Linux advocat by any means, quite the contrary, it's not personal, it's just business.
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I don't agree for two reasons: 1) Novell is fully behind the MONO project now and pouring resources into it 2) Aside from the fact that .net 3 is on the mono projects roadmap, I have yet to find a truly important feature in it for commercial software development.
John Cardinal wrote:
Novell is fully behind the MONO project now and pouring resources into it
Comparable to the resources that MS is putting behind .NET? I don't think so.
John Cardinal wrote:
I have yet to find a truly important feature in it for commercial software development.
I could say the same for .NET in general, but I won't ;)
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John Cardinal wrote:
Novell is fully behind the MONO project now and pouring resources into it
Comparable to the resources that MS is putting behind .NET? I don't think so.
John Cardinal wrote:
I have yet to find a truly important feature in it for commercial software development.
I could say the same for .NET in general, but I won't ;)
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I was looking at the MONO project which is .net under Linux and it's very close to full .net 2 support. http://www.mono-project.com/[^] .net 1 apps purportedly will run on linux under Mono with no changes, in most cases just copy it off windows and run it. http://www.mono-project.com/Guidelines:Application_Portability[^] This coupled with the increasing possibility that people may start jumping ship to Linux as an alternative to upgrading to Vista has made us decide that we will be supporting MONO in all our new commercial apps going forward and porting our existing ones as soon as it's feasible to do so. As a prelude to this I've been checking out the 3rd party component suites for .net that we use and most are saying they are looking at it but awaiting more requests to support it before they start seriously testing under MONO. The issues are all little things apparently like harcoded directory separator characters, registry usage. I recommend that anyone interested in MONO development down the road contact your favorite 3rd party component vendors now and request it.
I guess Microsoft will pull the plug of MONO.net as soon as it becomes too competitive. WinForms is not part of the standard and so are other parts of MONO, so it's only a matter of success before Microsoft sues them. With 'platform independence' Microsoft meant Win32 and Win64, not Linux ;)
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I guess Microsoft will pull the plug of MONO.net as soon as it becomes too competitive. WinForms is not part of the standard and so are other parts of MONO, so it's only a matter of success before Microsoft sues them. With 'platform independence' Microsoft meant Win32 and Win64, not Linux ;)
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I guess Microsoft will pull the plug of MONO.net as soon as it becomes too competitive. WinForms is not part of the standard and so are other parts of MONO, so it's only a matter of success before Microsoft sues them. With 'platform independence' Microsoft meant Win32 and Win64, not Linux ;)
Sues them for what?
Ðavid Wulff What kind of music to programmers listen to?
Join the Code Project Last.fm group | dwulff
Sleep deprivation does not cause physical harm. Humans can only survive about a week without sleep before flat out dying. - Espeir Logic Prism. -
Sues them for what?
Ðavid Wulff What kind of music to programmers listen to?
Join the Code Project Last.fm group | dwulff
Sleep deprivation does not cause physical harm. Humans can only survive about a week without sleep before flat out dying. - Espeir Logic Prism.David Wulff wrote:
Sues them for what?
Microsoft claims "intellectual property" for the Ribbon, so they will do the same with all parts of .NET which are not part of the standard.
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I was looking at the MONO project which is .net under Linux and it's very close to full .net 2 support. http://www.mono-project.com/[^] .net 1 apps purportedly will run on linux under Mono with no changes, in most cases just copy it off windows and run it. http://www.mono-project.com/Guidelines:Application_Portability[^] This coupled with the increasing possibility that people may start jumping ship to Linux as an alternative to upgrading to Vista has made us decide that we will be supporting MONO in all our new commercial apps going forward and porting our existing ones as soon as it's feasible to do so. As a prelude to this I've been checking out the 3rd party component suites for .net that we use and most are saying they are looking at it but awaiting more requests to support it before they start seriously testing under MONO. The issues are all little things apparently like harcoded directory separator characters, registry usage. I recommend that anyone interested in MONO development down the road contact your favorite 3rd party component vendors now and request it.
From my dealings with Mono, I'm mostly impressed. If I had more time, I'd continue some work that I had started in contribution to their FxCop-like tool (called Gendarme - it's still not ready for release). My biggest single problem with Mono is the absence of what I'd consider a sane debugger (i.e. gdb support isn't fully cooked, and their custom built debugger isn't ready for prime-time either). In fact, as much as I love the Mono stuff, I wouldn't recommend production development to any shops that didn't have heavy duty, long-haul coders involved. There are some portability issues that arise, of course. You mentioned hard-coded directory separators, but the problems there are actually deeper: directory separator, path construction (including drive-letter stuff that's always Windows-only), newline character(s), case sensitivity in filesystem access, ... There are also issues with Mono straying from the defined ECMA .NET spec in certain areas. The only one I can think of right now is that new AppDomains contain all of the assemblies loaded in the creating AppDomain, when they're actually only supposed to have mscorlib.dll and System.dll (I think). Alas, my shop is moving towards J2EE for server-side stuff, so I most likely won't being seeing any .NET at work for awhile. .NET stuff seems to be relegated to simple internal web sites and thick-client apps here.
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John Cardinal wrote:
MONO project which is .net under Linux and it's very close to full .net 2 support.
...and of course the "real" .NET is at version 3 and rushing towards 3.5 or whatever it is going to be called at Orcas. IMHO, Microsoft is pouring new features into .NET at the rate that Mono just can't keep up with given the resources they have.
Nemanja Trifunovic wrote:
..and of course the "real" .NET is at version 3 and rushing towards 3.5 or whatever it is going to be called at Orcas.
Umm, is ANYONE using ANYTHING that requires ANY version of .NET? As a consumer, I've come across NOTHING that even remotely requires it. As an application developer the domain I work in (hardware) does not require it. Seriously, not very many people are going to rush to upgrade their existing hardware just because Vista is out. Logically, this implies vendors doing any .NET programming are going to stick with the lowest common denominator when it comes to .NET. I'm pretty sure it's not going to be a version that only runs on Vista.
-Sean ---- Shag a Lizard
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Nemanja Trifunovic wrote:
...and of course the "real" .NET is at version 3 and rushing towards 3.5 or whatever it is going to be called at Orcas.
Does this really matter for those of us still churning out boring old HTML?
---- I just want you to be happy; That's my only little wish...
Shog9 wrote:
Does this really matter for those of us still churning out boring old HTML?
Well, technically, if you are only turning out old HTML, you probably do not need .NET anyway :)
Rocky <>< Latest Code Blog Post: ASP.NET HttpException - Cannot use leading "..".. Latest Tech Blog Post: Blog changed to Subtext!
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Shog9 wrote:
Does this really matter for those of us still churning out boring old HTML?
Well, technically, if you are only turning out old HTML, you probably do not need .NET anyway :)
Rocky <>< Latest Code Blog Post: ASP.NET HttpException - Cannot use leading "..".. Latest Tech Blog Post: Blog changed to Subtext!
Kinda helps though, if the code generating the HTML is written in a .NET language. ;) But yeah, as far as "need" goes, i'm not exactly waiting on anything.
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Nemanja Trifunovic wrote:
..and of course the "real" .NET is at version 3 and rushing towards 3.5 or whatever it is going to be called at Orcas.
Umm, is ANYONE using ANYTHING that requires ANY version of .NET? As a consumer, I've come across NOTHING that even remotely requires it. As an application developer the domain I work in (hardware) does not require it. Seriously, not very many people are going to rush to upgrade their existing hardware just because Vista is out. Logically, this implies vendors doing any .NET programming are going to stick with the lowest common denominator when it comes to .NET. I'm pretty sure it's not going to be a version that only runs on Vista.
-Sean ---- Shag a Lizard
Sean Cundiff wrote:
I'm pretty sure it's not going to be a version that only runs on Vista.
Not really, the .NET framework (3.0) is not for just "Vista", it will run on other versions of Windows. Additionally, Windows Vista will typically work fine on machines purchased in the last five years or so. I have it running on an old P4 1.7 ghz system with 512 megs of RAM. Does not take a $2,000 to run Vista. Sure, the old system my wife is using does not allow Aero to work, but there is much more to Vista than just a fancier GUI. Vista Glass interface does not appear that great of difference from their basic system and is good enough for most corporate users. At the first part of next year, most machines you purchase will have Vista on them in some form. Once the corportate world fully tests Vista and finds all its enhancements and how much it will save them in administration costs, many will move to Vista in a big way. I also think people forget about the added cost of moving to Linux. If you are not an expert with Linux, you can open yourself up to all kinds of security problems putting server live. For the businesses that have people wearing multiple hats (have to handle multiple roles in the business), it can be much safer to use Vista (or Win 2003) as default security nowadays is much better than in the past. Linux is not designed for the novice.
Rocky <>< Latest Code Blog Post: ASP.NET HttpException - Cannot use leading "..".. Latest Tech Blog Post: Blog changed to Subtext!
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We don't target average users, we target business users and there is a *lot* of buzz out there and some real world examples of business users jumping ship already. Be that as it may, I don't seriously believe that Linux will take huge market share away from Microsoft any time soon, but as a business person it makes sense to not ignore an increasing market and if my app can just be copied to linux and run then it makes even more sense. Sure it's leading edge but if people start to demand it in significant numbers I don't want to be caught by surprise. For the average user though, some day, when they go into a computer store and can buy a pc with Linux that runs all their apps for a few hundred dollars less than a comparable windows system it might be the tipping point. And believe me I'm no Linux advocat by any means, quite the contrary, it's not personal, it's just business.
John Cardinal wrote:
there is a *lot* of buzz out there and some real world examples of business users jumping ship already.
I believe most of those would have done so even without Vista coming out. Vista is the most business friendly version of Windows than has every been released. Anyone move from Windows to Linux clearly must "think" they will save money at the end of the day. If there was a free distro of Vista, I doubt Linux would ever survive.
Rocky <>< Latest Code Blog Post: ASP.NET HttpException - Cannot use leading "..".. Latest Tech Blog Post: Blog changed to Subtext!
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I guess Microsoft will pull the plug of MONO.net as soon as it becomes too competitive. WinForms is not part of the standard and so are other parts of MONO, so it's only a matter of success before Microsoft sues them. With 'platform independence' Microsoft meant Win32 and Win64, not Linux ;)
I agree! Microsoft's deal with Novell was a big step in telling the world that they hold the patent on .NET and will use those patents as a weapon if required. At th moment though, I think Microsoft is enjoying the aspect of having .NET ported to other platforms without cost or liability to them. I am sure that the day Microsoft feels any loss of market share due to Mono or other .NET ports, they will make the SCO battle look like a traffic ticket.
Rocky <>< Latest Code Blog Post: ASP.NET HttpException - Cannot use leading "..".. Latest Tech Blog Post: Blog changed to Subtext!
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From my dealings with Mono, I'm mostly impressed. If I had more time, I'd continue some work that I had started in contribution to their FxCop-like tool (called Gendarme - it's still not ready for release). My biggest single problem with Mono is the absence of what I'd consider a sane debugger (i.e. gdb support isn't fully cooked, and their custom built debugger isn't ready for prime-time either). In fact, as much as I love the Mono stuff, I wouldn't recommend production development to any shops that didn't have heavy duty, long-haul coders involved. There are some portability issues that arise, of course. You mentioned hard-coded directory separators, but the problems there are actually deeper: directory separator, path construction (including drive-letter stuff that's always Windows-only), newline character(s), case sensitivity in filesystem access, ... There are also issues with Mono straying from the defined ECMA .NET spec in certain areas. The only one I can think of right now is that new AppDomains contain all of the assemblies loaded in the creating AppDomain, when they're actually only supposed to have mscorlib.dll and System.dll (I think). Alas, my shop is moving towards J2EE for server-side stuff, so I most likely won't being seeing any .NET at work for awhile. .NET stuff seems to be relegated to simple internal web sites and thick-client apps here.
Russell Morris wrote:
Alas, my shop is moving towards J2EE for server-side stuff,
I am curious, why J2EE?
Rocky <>< Latest Code Blog Post: ASP.NET HttpException - Cannot use leading "..".. Latest Tech Blog Post: Blog changed to Subtext!
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From my dealings with Mono, I'm mostly impressed. If I had more time, I'd continue some work that I had started in contribution to their FxCop-like tool (called Gendarme - it's still not ready for release). My biggest single problem with Mono is the absence of what I'd consider a sane debugger (i.e. gdb support isn't fully cooked, and their custom built debugger isn't ready for prime-time either). In fact, as much as I love the Mono stuff, I wouldn't recommend production development to any shops that didn't have heavy duty, long-haul coders involved. There are some portability issues that arise, of course. You mentioned hard-coded directory separators, but the problems there are actually deeper: directory separator, path construction (including drive-letter stuff that's always Windows-only), newline character(s), case sensitivity in filesystem access, ... There are also issues with Mono straying from the defined ECMA .NET spec in certain areas. The only one I can think of right now is that new AppDomains contain all of the assemblies loaded in the creating AppDomain, when they're actually only supposed to have mscorlib.dll and System.dll (I think). Alas, my shop is moving towards J2EE for server-side stuff, so I most likely won't being seeing any .NET at work for awhile. .NET stuff seems to be relegated to simple internal web sites and thick-client apps here.
Yes I've discussed the practicalities of development with a guy at Novell and he stressed that the assemblies are compatible straight from Visual Studio and they fully expect most developers will be using Visual Studio as their primary development environment.
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John Cardinal wrote:
there is a *lot* of buzz out there and some real world examples of business users jumping ship already.
I believe most of those would have done so even without Vista coming out. Vista is the most business friendly version of Windows than has every been released. Anyone move from Windows to Linux clearly must "think" they will save money at the end of the day. If there was a free distro of Vista, I doubt Linux would ever survive.
Rocky <>< Latest Code Blog Post: ASP.NET HttpException - Cannot use leading "..".. Latest Tech Blog Post: Blog changed to Subtext!
Yeah of course it's all about money and when faced with the prospect of a major new os that requires more powerful hardware than they have it get's people thinking about alternatives. I like / hate Vista so far, I hate that it seems really fragile and explorer process crashes easily to the point you have to re-install it, I hate the way security is done in it which is basically to train people to ignore security warnings, but I do like that our main app runs faster than with winxp on the same box and that it's slicker looking. At the end of the day I just want to provide people with what they want already, not convince the world they should want XX. If people want to use Linux it's fine by me if I can easily ensure that my app will run on both Linux/windows/mac then even better.