[Mono-list] Installing Mono on Debian

[Andreas Färber]

Paolo,
> Beginners in the Linux worls should always use the packages that come
> with their distribution. This is the documentation people need and it
> is up to date:) If your distribution doesn't have current mono packages,
> complain with them or change distribution.
I agree with you that for beginners it is easiest to use the
distribution-native packages.

However, most distributions have the tendency not to provide the latest
releases as updates. For example, your Suse 10.0 (which was the last
stable release last time I checked) still had a pretty old version of
BlueZ and other packages and I found out that in general given one
particular version of a distro only minor updates will make it into a
distribution for fear of breaking changes. This explains why many
distributions are still at Mono 1.1.8.x or something which is far from
up-to-date given the progress of Mono and the fortunately frequent
availability of updated releases. So sometimes it's not a question of a
"bad" distribution not providing the latest packages but simply a
question of the numbering scheme - they'd provide any 1.1.8.x update but
not 1.1.9+.x as an update to the previous. Not that I'm saying the
versioning scheme of Mono was bad, I can live with it, but in the end to
get the latest bug fixes and feature enhancements users will have to
turn to downloading packages from the Mono website if they want to have
a current installation of Mono!

Andreas