There’s been a long running rant about how using Mono is um, bad. But I just don’t get it. Now we have Richard M. Stallman coming out against Mono and C# with an argument that sounds kinda like “we shouldn’t use it just because we shouldn’t.” Hmm, Ok. [ok, that is way too much of an over simplification and taking some things out of context. However, I'm still not sure what's bad: C#, Mono, or both?]

The odd thing about the post if that it focuses on C#, but none of the other languages that the the Mono CLR supports. Second, he goes on to state that “If we lose the use of C#, we will lose them [the applications] too.” Given that C# is an ECMA standard (as is the CLR itself), I think the conerns about not being able use C# are unwarrented. If we have to worry that the ECMA would allow Microsoft to pull rank on C#, then web developers should be rethinking thier use of JavaScript.

But the wierd thing is that Stallman doesn’t make the same point about any other langauage that the Mono CLR supports. For example, if Tomboy were written in the Boo programming language but remain on the Mono CLR, would evertyhing be ok? Why is there such a profound hatred of C# and not other lanagues supported by the CLR? Why not come out against the use CIL? Or is Stallman just not making his point clear enough?

As somone who uses Ubuntu 9.0.4 on a daily basis, I can apprciate what Mono has to offer from an end user perspecitive. I’m a HUGE fan of GnomeDo, which has turned out to be a better implementation of Quicksilver than Quicksilver. Then of course there’s Banshee, which is blosoming into an excellent media player. And also there F-Spot for photo management. I could go on, but the point is here that there are a lot of really great applications for GNOME that happen to be built on Mono.

Overall, I find that the post is weak on sound technical and legal arguments and high as a kite on FUD. Where’s the meat? Specifically, what can Microsoft go after that’s not GNOME if people start rewriting Mono applications in C++? Jo Shields has a lengthy, but excellent, post called Why Mono Doesn’t Suck. Jo’s post makes a lot of really good points about Mono if you don’t have a short attention span.

In the end, i think that a Mono is ultimately a good thing for Linux on the desktop. Anything that gives developers better productivity, and choice is a good. Part of being free is being able to make a choice: we should be free to choose whether or not we actually want to use applications developed with Mono.

For the past two weeks, I’ve been enjoying 64-bit Ubuntu 9.04 on my HP 8530w. It’s very fast, and ext4 is helps considerably with boot times. Overall, I find this release to be pretty good. But, there’s one item that irks me to no end and that is the much touted “MAPI” support for Evolution.

For starters, the MAPI support is not installed by default, but it’s a post-install add-on. No big deal really, but it is misleading to say that it’s included in the release when it’s actually just in the repos. Next up is that fact that it simply doesn’t work. In fact, the Evolution-MAPI plugin is alpha quality at best. For starters, just setting up an account is busted. Each time I’d go to authenticate, Evolution would simply crash. Then I found this post which suggested using the IP address instead of the host name, which actaully worked.

When Evolution connects to the Exchange server, the initial load is PAINFULLY slow. The other thing is that folder structure is weird as well. In my case, my inbox was buried under 4 other sub-folders. The good news is that I can see email, with caveats. For example, replies or forwards are not prefixed with “re:” or “fw:”, even if they were in Outlook. Second, any meeting request acceptance or decline doesn’t get prefixed with “accepted:” or “decline:”, you just see the subject of the original meeting request. Which brings me to calendar and contacts. While I can see my calendars, they don’t get translated into my local time zone. This is kind of a problem. Contacts kinda work. I can see some of them, but for the most part, Evolution crashes before I can successfully select a contact.

Yeah, I know I should probably file some bugs. But be advised that if you’re upgrading to 9.04 to gain Exchange 2007 support, this isn’t the release you want. Here’s to hoping that things improve significantly in Karmic Koala.

I’ve been a long time user of Eclipse, but also a critic of SWT – the UI toolkit that Eclipse uses. While Eclipse has always been a very productive tool on OS X, SWT has always lagged a bit behind other platforms. But the great thing about Eclipse 3.5, and SWT in general, is that it is now using Cocoa instead of Carbon. Additionally, the SWT guys have paid attention to a lot of little details, such as sheets and Mac-looking drag and drop indicators to name a few. There’s a lot that’s gone into this SWT release that makes me rethink my position on Swing.

One other thing to point out is that the Eclipse 3.5 release candidates are friggin’ snappy as hell. Startup times on all three platforms are very good and responsiveness is simply better overall. This is a release I’m really looking forward to.