Tag Archives: open source

.net, microsoft, mono, open source, visual studio

Mono Tools for Visual Studio: code on Windows, run on Linux

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I have just com across Mono Tools, a Novell add-in for Visual Studio that lets you test Mono compatibility. It adds a Mono menu which has options to run locally or remotely in Mono, analyze for compatibility issues, and create deployment packages. No sign of Mac support, which is a missed opportunity, but understandable given that Novell owns SUSE Linux.

For those few still unfamiliar with Mono, it is an open source implementation of Microsoft’s .NET Framework, enabling your .NET applications to run on other platforms. One compelling use is to have your ASP.NET web applications run on the free Apache web server, rather than Microsoft’s IIS.

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Mono Tools works with both Windows Forms and web projects.

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This is just the sort of thing Mono needs to move it further into the mainstream, though another less welcome sign of business acceptance is that this is a commercial product, currently costing $99.00 for an individual or $249.00 per seat in an organization. There is also an Ultimate edition at $2,499, which comes with a commercial non-LGPL license to redistribute Mono.

The Mono Tools team is now looking for testers for its 1.1 edition, which supports Visual Studio 2010.

google, intel, mobile, nokia, open source, qt, software development

Nokia Maemo, Intel Moblin gives way to MeeGo

Nokia’s Maemo operating system, a Linux distribution for mobile devices, is being merged with the Intel-sponsored Moblin distribution to form MeeGo, under the direction of the Linux Foundation:

MeeGo combines Intel’s Moblin and Nokia’s Maemo projects at the Linux Foundation to create one open source uber-platform for the next generation of computing devices: tablets, pocketable computers, netbooks, automotive IVI and more.

says the Foundation’s Jim Zemlin.

Watching the joint Intel and Nokia interview it seemed to me that this is more Maemo than Moblin, especially since Nokia’s Qt framework and Qt Creator IDE is mentioned as the primary application development platform for MeeGo.

The most significant factor is that Intel and Nokia will now be backing the same mobile OS. You would expect this to have an impact, though I guess the move is an attempt to win back mindshare that has gone to Android, the up and coming mobile OS from Google.

Although both Android and MeeGo are based on Linux, the Android OS has a completely different development model based on Java rather than C/C++.