[MonoDevelop] Review of MonoDevelop

[Mike Krüger]

Hi

> Pardon my ignorance of Linux's history and culture, I noticed early days of
> Ubuntu, mono was shipped with the distro. Then I read (forgetting which
> version) that Mono was not part of packages being shipped
>
> Why is such strong hatred even though the original work was done by MS but
> Mono was built from the ECMA/ISO standard. Linux seems to embrace a
> proprietary software platform (Java) a lot more warmly than CLR, which is an
> open standard platform.
I don't know - it seems that some people hate anything that's related to 
MS. With the exception of the linux kernel which copies MS technologies 
(FAT) and get's direct contributions from MS devs, Samba which copies 
the Windows network code or Wine which copies Windows. But mono was 'too 
much' for them.

My personal PoV is that these things are all "programs" more or less - 
and mono isn't just a Program - it's the way of making programs & how 
people think about that. Some people don't want to believe that they 
spent years of their life with an inferior technology ... maybe that's 
the cause - but your guess is as good as mine.

> All your contributions and suggestions are very educational from someone new
> to Linux culture. I have just switched over to Mint-15 (Cinnamon) and loving
> its UI and won't be moving to other distro just to get MD4.
I love mint as well - I'm a long time linux mint user ... but I switched 
recently to http://manjaro.org/
They deliver a recent mono (which is able to compile monodevelop git out 
of the box) and monodevelop 4 - and the best: It has Cinnamon as well :)
The only downside is that it's harder to set up - I would only recommend 
this distribution to people with some knowledge about linux (or people 
who want to learn a bit about the system).

> Several things I am always edgy of using things from PPA which stems from
> years developing in Windows world:
> 1) How can one be sure things from PPA use all the correct platform
> supporting modules?
> 2) How can one be sure if the PPA builder has not tempered with build
> settings to get things to build - ending up with using "It-works-here"
> yardstick? As a result a distribution from one PPA may not be the same as
> one from another PPA.
> 3) What extend of the testing these PPA has done compared to say a vendor of
> the software, e.g Xamarin? I know it is still the prefer modus operandi of
> Linux to build everything from source for anything.
> 4) Finally, not suggesting it has happened, how trustworthy are things from
> PPA that it does not introduce back doors or nasties? One of the great
> features in CLR is the strong name assembly to prevent tempering.

I don't think that there are general answers - depends on too many 'ifs' 
- can range from rock solid & secure to 'mess up your linux installation 
& open your home network to NSA backdoors'.

Regards
Mike