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Linux has a negative image associated with it; a most unfortunate affliction when that image is contrary to the truth. I'm occasionally asked "why do you bother with Linux?" by people who haven't used it recently under the assumption that it's difficult to use, counter intuitive, geeky, nerdy and any number of other adjectives.
Microsoft only produces the Silverlight runtime for Windows and OS X, leaving Linux support to Novell's Mono project, which produces Moonlight. Mono developers argue that Mono is not chasing tail lights, but in the case of Moonlight it very clearly is.
Mono has a potentially fatal sting-in-the-tail for some, and leaves a rather nasty taste in the mouths of many others… So, I thought I’d see what happened if I removed Mono from Ubuntu.
Blue Gnu Media & Technology announced today that its flagship service, Blue GNU, has seen strong, steady growth in readership for the first quarter, a positive impact on various Free Software projects, as well as new clients for its advertising and marketing services.
Now that Microsoft formally recognises the contribution of Miguel de Icaza to Microsoft, there is no longer any reason to think of Mono as beneficial to GNU/Linux
Paint.NET is one of the best image editing applications for Windows and it has a version for Linux too, called Paint.Mono (or Mono Paint). According to Miguel de Icaza, most of the features in Paint.NET have been ported over to Paint-Mono, with more to come. Apparently, this should also work on Mac OSX, details HERE.
In short, we are in an adversarial situation. Microsoft does not want us to succeed. Thus we cannot trust Microsoft, even if we'd like to, and must consider Mono based upon the question "What is the worst thing MS can reasonably do?". We can only trust Mono if we are convinced Microsoft doesn't have weasel room. The current situation appears, to me, to have lots of weasel room.
