Let’s Start On Mono

Hello!

Has my friend said in previous posts, exists an implementation of .NET platform called Mono.

Mono is an open source multi-platform software to run .NET client and server applications on Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, Windows, and Unix. Is based on the ECMA/ISO standards and can run ASP.NET and Winforms applications, NET, Java, Python and more languages .

Right now, Mono is in version 1.9. As you can imagine, I will not describe all the features that are supported. For more detailed information consult Mono Roadmap.

At this time Mono supports almost all features that exist on Microsoft .NET framework 2.0.

Since Mono 1.2 release they have made seven incremental updates to Mono (1.9)

• VB.NET compiler and runtime were released.
• Windows.Forms 2.0 feature-complete.
• 2.0 support completed for Web Services (Generics).
• ASP.NET WebForms are complete (except for WebParts).
• Support for ASP.NET AJAX.
• Release of Mono Migration Assistant.
• C# 3.0 support and System.Core assembly
• LINQ to Objects
• LINQ to XML.
• System.Media implemented.
• HTTPS support in HttpListener.
• 2.0 Socket API.
• Improved fidelity and performance of System.Drawing, added support for Metafiles.
• Mono's MSBuild is able to build projects.
• SafeHandles and HandleRef support.
• MIPS, Alpha ports and Solaris/amd64 ports.
• Mono can now run without shared memory segments.
• New Mono.DataConvert library
  
• ADO.NET 2.0 updates, and support for output parameters on stored procedures.
• installvst tool for installing ASP.NET starter kits.
• New Sqlite bindings.
• COM/XpCOM support.

Some features are not fully implemented but, they have work very much and in version 2.0, Mono will have more features like:

Complete core class libraries support.

• Complete ASP.NET 2.0 support (minus mobile support).
• Complete ADO.NET 2.0 support.
• Windows.Forms 2.0.

· C# 3.0

• LINQ to Objects.
• LINQ to XML.

• · Visual Basic Compiler (VBNC)

Windows.Forms 2.0

• GInterface support.

To begin using Mono you need to go to the mono Project website and download the Mono installer. You can chose witch distribution you want (Windows, Mac, Linux).

If you have Linux Ubunto 7.10 you can see my movie (Install Mono on Linux Ubuntu 7.10 ), where I demonstrate who install Mono. It’s my first movie, next time I will try do it better.

I hope that this information was useful to someone. Next time we gone look how install MonoDevelop 1.0 on Linux and begin develop something.

This post maybe was a little boring, but it’s need to start working whit Mono.

There's a new guy in town!

Hello all!

Just a quick post to let you know we have a new contributor. It's Flatrix! He's a colleague of mine at my university (ISEL) and is into open source as well.

Let's hope he bring in a new spirit to the blog and lot's of knowledge.

Welcome!

I'm still alive

Hello!...

Well, for those of you who think this will be an open source related post you're wrong. Actually this post doesn’t have anything to do with technology. It's more of a personal post.
Like you might notice, this blog has suffered from a lack of actualization. In a try of excusing myself... this has been due to my university works. But now since I'm on vacation and I "only" have to revise for the exams I'll try to bring you more content.

To say the truth, I've actually not used Linux too much in the last month. All my works have to be made using Microsoft technology. And although I know the existence of the open implementation of the .NET (CLR/CLI), the MONO, I haven't had time to check it out (hmm... nice ideas to upcoming posts!)

To finish (because I know this talk is boring) I just want to give you all my appreciation. Many people from many places have visited the blog. And I had some nice comments and subscriptions on my YouTube videos.

Enough of this.
See you soon!

Compiz desktop effects

Hi, as promised in the last post I'm going to talk about some Linux desktop effects that most common distributions include.
In my opinion, desktop effects are very cool! It's true that the most common user likes performance, but if that can by allied to presentation, why not? Not every effects are useful, and the majority of them don't bring nothing new in terms of features. But when you use them and see all those nice things moving around you really like it!
I use only compiz which is a tool that provides some plugins that bring you a new experience in Linux. I must say that after you get used to some of the effects like the one when you move the windows (you can see that in my videos) you actually feel strange when you use a system that doesn't have it.

The effect that most people probably know is the cube. Everyone talks about the cube and associate the latest version of ubuntu with it. This is a great effect that uses the feature of having available multiple desktops. Before using this effect I never used the feature of multiple desktops, so this is a case where an effect brought up a feature!

Enough talk, be sure to check out the video and that should get you going:



Cool isn't it?
And there are a lot of things to keep you going in compiz. And after you think you know everything, explore, and discover more cool things to make your desktop really amazing.
A good starting point should be desklets. A nice implementation of desklets is adesklets, be sure to check it out!

But don't think that to have a nice desktop you need to install extra software. You can always use themes to your desktop environment. A quick search on Google about Gnome or KDE themes gives you plenty of places to look for desktop beauties!

And if you want leave a screenshot or a video in the commentaries about your desktop I would like very much to see it!

Vista vs. Linux Desktop

Some days have passed and I really haven't got much time to write stuff here.

Today I just want to tell you about a little (and I'm being ironic of course) topic that much people seem to talk about these days.
Almost a year has passed since Vista was released and from that day I haven't heard much good opinions about it. The most common aspect people seem to point out is that Vista just takes a lot of resources. Even in my machine which is a dual core running at 1.83Ghz and 2Gb of RAM Vista seems to run not as fast and fluid as XP. Some of my friends even changed back from Vista to XP.
And they do this because not only it runs slower but the changes Vista brought aren't enough to make worth the low performance.
So comparisons started to apear between Vista and some Linux desktops.
I spotted two articles on the net that I thought are interesting about this:

Vista vs. Linux Dektop
Vista: They took five years for this?

I don't think these articles are just trying to say bad things about Vista, I think they show you what's wrong and some solutions that some Linux desktops present.

Although these comparisons are most about performance I think too that in terms of presentation and desktop effects, the common Linux distribution beats Vista.
In some distributions like Ubuntu those effects are available right out of the box!
I'll try to make a nice video showing off these effects to use in my next post!

Automatix

So let's talk about automatix!

Automatix is an applications for debian based Linux distributions that installs a great range of software for you. It's like the Synaptic Package Manager but specific for some applications. The goal of automatix e to provide you with some useful applications right out of the box.
This applications go from chat clients, browsers, email clients to multimedia support (video/audio players, codecs), office suites, development tools, etc.
And the great thing is that is very easy to use, you just select what you want to install and automatix does the rest for you.

Anyway, I felt like doing a video to show you better how to use it:



Hope you liked it and use it as well!

Open source software and software piracy relation

I came across an article on Steve York's blog which talks a bit about the relation between open source software and if it reduces in fact software piracy.
I think the topic is very interesting and Steven made a statistics among his readers to determine how many of them reduced piracy by using open source software.

In my personal case I think I'm not the best person to talk about this since my university has an agreement with Microsoft which lets students access their software by free.
But I think that with some research you can definitely let go of some common applications like Microsoft Office (OpenOffice exists and it's a great office suite), Photoshop (Paint.NET and Gimp are great programs for image edition/creation) and many others.
Even when we talk about development you have Eclipse for Java development and SharpDevelop or Mono-Development which let's you develop applications using Microsoft .NET framework!

Some people just don't bother to search! If you're on of those people or if you're just new to this world, Steven York also has a list of what he considers to be the 70 coolest free applications.
Also Andrew Sellick has a list of 100 great free tools for web developers.

So be sure to check these links and leave a comment about your personal experience, did the use of open source software reduced your software piracy! (I won't tell the police :-P )