ASP.NET on Linux? (Part 1): ASP Alliance

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ASP.NET on Linux? (Part 1)

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by Rebecca Wise
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Compatibility - The Good News

As we get into the nitty-gritty of our discussion of Mono’s compatibility with .NET be prepared for some good news and some not so good news. As tradition dictates, we’ll look at the good news first.

Our first bit of good news is that if you want to use Mono to test your applications for compatibility but have little interest in establishing a Linux test environment then you’re in luck. Mono provides a simple Windows executable that will install and configure your system for Mono development. In fact, it’s important to note that Mono has no dependencies on .NET applications or class libraries so you don’t need to have .NET installed on Windows to develop .NET applications with Mono. To download the latest Mono installer head on over to http://www.go-mono.com/download.html and grab the latest version.

Mono currently supports ASP.NET deployment on Linux using either a small, light-weight web-server written in C# called XSP or via an add-on for Apache called mod_mono. Whereas XSP is ideal for experimentation and development scenarios mod_mono is clearly the choice for deployments demanding greater performance and reliability. Currently, Mono’s XSP web-server is not included as part of the Mono distribution. Although downloading the C# source code for XSP is easy enough, actually building the source on Windows is a pain since Mono’s build system is very UNIX-centric in its reliance on “make” files. Since most Windows users don’t have the tools required to compile “make” files I’ve posted the XSP executable at my web-site here. What’s interesting to note is that although I built the XSP executable on Linux it runs just fine under Windows, which brings us to our next bit of good news…

Because Mono’s .NET compatible run-time (officially called the CLI, short for Common Language Infrastructure) is byte code compatible with Microsoft .NET binaries, you can (at least in theory) copy an existing .NET application from Windows to Linux and run it without recompilation. Likewise, any application compiled using Mono’s C# compiler will also run without recompilation under Windows. Of course, the truth of the matter is that, in either case, if you write your application using assemblies that are not available on the alternative platform you’re going to run into problems and therein lies the rub…

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User Comments

Title: thanks
Name: debanjan sengupta
Date: 7/21/2009 1:34:53 AM
Comment:
i cannot install xsp on my fedora 9 system.i have already installed mono 2.4.2 and monodoc 2.0 but an error message is coming while installing xsp that "you need to install either mono 2.0 orc higher or .net sdk".what should i do?????

Title: Thank you
Name: Okari
Date: 5/31/2009 2:43:22 PM
Comment:
Thanks a lot... I'm a new graduate from university trying to set up a webserver for a small business, I studied mainly asp.net and started worrying cause the introductory classes clearly started that asp.net belongs to that other OS makers...

Thanks a lot

Title: What web server??
Name: Anthony Estrada
Date: 4/29/2009 11:29:26 PM
Comment:
What web server for mono.net??? i have develop ang asp.net application in mono but im wondering how could i implement it.

Title: Positioning of Mono
Name: David Maeder
Date: 4/23/2009 3:49:05 AM
Comment:
Excellent introduction to Mono, giving an independent warts and all view of this project.

Title: Game Dev
Name: GasDeveloper
Date: 3/3/2009 2:15:10 PM
Comment:
Does Mono have any support for 3D Graphic libraries, Or is it able to use any Libraries that support .NET. And can mono be used for GUI Applications?

Title: Mono
Name: edcon
Date: 8/6/2008 2:58:59 PM
Comment:
do you think mono supports Ajax, Silverlight and MS SQL database? Not sure if I'm asking a right question.

Title: Great Idea
Name: metalisa
Date: 7/24/2008 9:00:16 AM
Comment:
it will be a great feature to be able to run asp/net applications on linux

Title: Thanks
Name: Jagadish
Date: 7/14/2008 11:24:24 AM
Comment:
Thanks it is a good article.

Title: Crystal Reports on Ubuntu
Name: Zahid Khan kakar
Date: 6/13/2008 6:54:23 AM
Comment:
Please also tell me about Crystal reports with mono. Thanks

Title: Thakur
Name: Pankaj Kr.
Date: 5/19/2008 8:25:42 AM
Comment:
The article was of great interest to the developers like us who has the expertise of developing an application in .Net and wish to port the same across different platform.

Do continue to write similar articles but also test some .Net application on Mono. Because there is still some ????????s on the compatibility of the two.

Pankaj Kr. Thakur
Chief Executive
Renuka Associates Pvt. Ltd.
New Delhi, India.
Email: pkt@limsys.net

Title: VB Asp.net hosting on Linux (Ubuntu)
Name: busnetdown
Date: 5/13/2008 10:06:47 AM
Comment:
There is a good tutorial at DoTheWeb.net about setting up your Ubuntu server to host Asp.net applications. Also information about Vb Asp.net pages.

Title: Nice
Name: Marvin
Date: 4/24/2008 3:45:12 AM
Comment:
Nice one on MONO . I just hope it will live up to its promises . I love open source and linux but in my job i use .Net so MONO is a great welcome.

Title: hi
Name: pampa
Date: 6/8/2007 2:38:22 AM
Comment:
Now that you understand that Mono’s implementation of .NET is still a work-in-progress it’s important to reflect on how much has been accomplished by the talented programmers contributing to this effort. A good example of the progress Mono has made toward providing a viable cross platform ASP.NET implementation is found in the fact that a number of Microsoft’s sample applications including IBuySpy work unmodified on Mono. As for performance, although Microsoft’s C# compiler generates more performant code is currently more performant than that produced by mono’s C# compiler the gap is closing rapidly. In addition, Mono’s support for Visual Basic.NET is shaping up quite nicely.

Title: Hosting providers
Name: Eric Windisch
Date: 3/24/2007 6:24:32 PM
Comment:
The provider that is listed there has gone out of business. However, there are other providers now. At least one of which has been in business for over 5 years...

For the latest list of providers supporting Mono:
http://www.mono-project.com/FAQ:_ASP.NET#Who_provides_Mono-based_hosting_of_applications.3F

Title: I loved this one
Name: Rahul
Date: 9/18/2006 5:30:47 AM
Comment:
praveen , I do not agree , There are so many indian companies that use dotnet may be willing to switch to *nix . Mono will be a blessing .

Title: how long will it survive
Name: praveen
Date: 8/27/2006 11:53:46 PM
Comment:
well, here in india, java runs in large, so i dont think so it wud survive in future with this new tech...!...?

Title: Really Nice information
Name: Vijay Kumar Mateti
Date: 7/20/2006 11:45:34 AM
Comment:
You really saved me. I'm a GNU supporter, I fell in love with linux but most of my work is on .NET platform so i'm forced to work on this environment. This article really cleared the clouds regarding implimentation of mono on linux. Expecting more Technical article on mono....

Title: MONO
Name: Sarvesh Dhiman
Date: 4/5/2006 2:24:11 AM
Comment:
The article about mono is too good. But is it possible to port ASP.Net application or windiw application on Unix platform using Mono. If it is possible then will it be great sucess then we possible to use COM Components on Unix Platform. and will run all aplication on linux

Title: Niks
Name: Niks
Date: 8/29/2005 2:04:50 AM
Comment:
The article is too cool. But is it possible to port ASP.Net application on Unix platform using Mono. If it is possible then will it be possible to use COM Components (Like Excel Workesheet, Excel Chart Objects, VB DLLs, etc.) on Unix Platform?

waiting for your reply. U can mail me at nikhil.brahmankar@3i-infotech.com.

Title: devil
Name: devil
Date: 1/20/2005 7:42:11 AM
Comment:
excellent article....i am a supporter of open source and mono...

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