Before I begin this essay, I would like to go ahead and pre-empt any attempts to make me out like I’m a Mono shill. I’m far from it. The only application that uses Mono that I found remotely useful was F-Spot. I see no point in running Tomboy when I can just use Gedit (since files are opened in multiple tabs, just like EditPad).

JASON has just published two posts that hit the nail on the head. The first one is a detailed explanation of how, why, and who might be interested in suppressing Mono opposition. There are many reasons to ignore these gagging attempts, which include relentless attempts to assassinate the character of individuals and reputation of Web sites.

Mono's dangers and its newest attempts to enter GNU/Linux distributions, desktop environments

More waste of paper from Novell (attempts to grab just existing GNU/Linux users) and increasing intersection with Microsoft in the form of Mono

Tracking attempts to push Banshee into Ubuntu by default

There has been a lot of pro-Mono and anti-Mono arguments assaulting the community of late. The debate is not new but both sides have taken up arms since some distributions have decided to either remove Mono or include Mono by default.

A reader believes that an application which promotes .NET/Mono might be marketed to GNU/Linux-using public some time in the future now that the GIMP is removed from Ubuntu, due to another Mono application

Avant Window Navigator is a dock for the Free Desktop which shows your launchers and open applications. It also contains support for extensions, via plugins for third-party applications, which communicate with the dock with DBus, and via applets, which allows for workspace switchers, system trays, clocks, etc., to be embedded in the dock. These applets can be written in Vala, Python or C.

In the previous article, I explained how to install Avant Window Navigator in Ubuntu Linux (Gutsy Gibbon). By default, it doesn't install any applets. But a dock without any applets is as boring as a desktop without a dock right? So here are a couple of AWN applets which I found really interesting. But first the installation ...