As the title of this article suggests, you are probably asking yourself “How can ASP.NET applications run on Linux?”  The answer comes in the form of a free software download from Ximian, a little known company that was recently acquired by networking giant Novell.  The Mono Project, as the software development effort is officially known, is primarily designed to allow Unix and Linux developers to compile and run .NET applications on their platform of choice.  However, if you’re not a Unix or Linux developer don’t turn the channel just yet! The odds are good that at least deploying ASP.NET applications on Linux may still be in your future because of the reduced costs associated with this combination.  Even if you have no personal interest in Linux or Mono’s cross-platform goals it’s still a good idea to be prepared to offer this low-cost option to your customers or management.

As you may be aware, most companies offering low-cost web hosting services provide their customers with access to a Linux box running Apache.  They also generally provide access to some form of open source database software (often MySQL or PostgreSQL) as well as access to a scripting language like PHP that is pretty much equivalent to classic ASP. While this combination can be employed effectively to build a variety of web-based applications, it’s impossible to deny that there are many benefits to using a more modern language architecture like ASP.NET.  Customers who want the best of both worlds—that is, the ability to deploy ASP.NET applications in a low-cost environment—will inevitably be drawn to the powerful combination of Linux and Mono to provide this capability.