Installing Mono on Linux

Mono is an open source initiative spearheaded by Novell to extend Microsoft's .NET on Linux and other non-microsoft platforms. The advantage of mono over .NET is that any software compiled using mono can be ported to any operating system with ease. Mono also makes use of GTK# libraries. There are a number of excellent GPLed applications that are developed using mono framework. For these applications to run on your computer, you need the mono runtime libraries installed on your machine. I have Fedora core 2 installed on my machine. And to my consternation, it didn't ship with mono. So I had to download the mono runtime from its website mono-project.com , which happened to be a hefty 39 MB download. It took me approximately 1 Hr on my 128 Kpbs cable internet connection to download and install it. On their website, you will find source as well as binary packages. There were no binary rpm packages offered for Fedora core 2 though there were rpm packages targeted at RedHat 9, Fedora Core 3 and so on which I think would have worked on Fedora Core 2. But to be on the safer side, I downloaded the binary installer by the name mono-1.1.6-installer.bin which was guaranteed to work on all distributions. The installation went smoothly, though I had to set the executable flag of the mono-1.1.6-installer.bin file before running it, which I did by running the chmod command.

# chmod u+x mono-1.1.6-installer.bin
# ./mono-1.1.6-installer.bin

The people who have migrated from windows to Linux will feel right at home using this installer which sports a nice clean GUI and there is also an uninstaller with which you can remove the software at a later time if you so choose. By default, the software installs the files in the /opt/mono-1.1.6 directory though there is an option available to install in a different location. I installed it in the /usr/local/mono-1.1.6 directory. During installation, it added the path of the mono binaries to the .bashrc file of the user account. Here I ran into a slight problem because I installed the software by logging in as root. So the installer only updated the root account's .bashrc file. Since I use an account other than root to do my work, I had to manually include the path to the mono binaries in my normal account's .bashrc file which I did as follows:

#FILE: .bashrc
$PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/mono-1.1.6/bin
export $PATH

Once the installation was completed, I took a cursory glance in the /usr/local/mono-1.1.6/bin directory. And I found lots of utilities including a command line compiler for the C# language - 'mcs', an IDE called 'monodevelop' which can be used to create applications using C# and of course a Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) virtual machine that contains a class loader, Just-in-time compiler and a garbage collecting runtime similar to those found in Sun's Java development kit.

My reasons for installing mono ?

Actually I wanted to try out this nifty software called Tomboy which sports my favorite comic book character Tintin - I suspect they changed the name to tomboy so as to escape getting sued by the creators of the popular comic book. Tomboy is a simple note taking application which resides in your task bar. It helps you organize your ideas and information you deal with everyday. It's unique feature is that you can link your notes to each other as well as other documents. Also it supports rich text and recognizes hyperlinks which makes it a really productive tool. The user interface is attractive but spartan which is a good thing for people who just want to get the job done. But to run this software you need the mono runtime libraries installed on your machine. And after installing this software and using it, I feel the pains I took to install mono were worth it.

Of course, there are other really good softwares being developed on mono framework. And considering the fact that Novell has put its weight behind it, I feel, mono holds promise for the users and the developers alike.