Feasibility of C# development with Mono

Question

Recently, I came across Mono and MonoDevelop packages in Ubuntu linux. They claim to have a .NET runtime in accordance with CLI. Before installing the packages myself, I would l

Answer 1

1. Mono is mighty powerful. It has all the .Net muscle on a very strong open source skeleton.

2. When you say "develop GUI application for linux like developing WinForm applications for Windows" I understand that you are asking about a visual designer that will allow you to quickly create the UI. Yes, it is possible. MonoDevelop has Stetic - a built-in visual designer for Gtk#. There is also QyotoDevelop which enables QT support in MonoDevelop.

3. Yes, MonoDevelop natively supports VS project/solution file format. You can use the same code base to compile your app with VS in .Net on Windows and win MD in Mono on Linux.

4. Currently Mono supports C# 3.0 with some stuff beyond that already implemented and a lot in the pipeline.

5. Yes, in many cases it is possible to run a .Net compiled app in Mono, however with MonoDevelop's support for VS solutions it doesn't really matter. It takes as much as pressing F7 to rebuild the whole project, so the effort is really negligible. The best tool for checking if your application can run in Mono is MoMA.