Mono 2.0 released

Mono Project Announces Mono 2.0 for Cross-Platform Microsoft .NET
Development

Developers can now run .NET applications on Linux, Solaris, Unix & Mac
platforms

WALTHAM, Mass. - Oct. 6, 2008 - The Mono(R)  project, an open source
initiative sponsored by Novell, today announced the availability of Mono
2.0, an open source, cross-platform .NET development framework. Mono 2.0
provides all the necessary software to develop and run .NET client and
server applications on Linux*, as well as other operating systems. The new
Mono 2.0 release is now compatible with the desktop and server components of
version 2.0 of the Microsoft* .NET framework and features the Mono Migration
Analyzer (MoMA), an analytical tool for .NET-to-Linux migrations.

According to an IDC study (1), nearly 50 percent of IT decision makers,
developers and architects surveyed, reported that they use Microsoft .NET as
the application technology platform on which their mission-critical
applications (excluding email) run. With Mono 2.0, developers can leverage
their existing investment and skill sets to build .NET 2.0 applications for
deployment on a variety of platforms, including Linux, Solaris*, Unix*, and
Mac OS X*.

"Mono 2.0 gives .NET developers the freedom to run their applications on a
wide variety of operating systems, including Linux, MacOS, and Unix," said
Miguel de Icaza, vice president of Development Platforms at Novell and
maintainer of the Mono project. "Mono 2.0 benefits a wider range of
developers, ISVs and end-users by allowing them to write their applications
once and run them on any OS platform, dramatically increasing portability
and expanding their market reach."

More than 2000 .NET applications are Mono 2.0 compatible with no code
changes
Mono 2.0 now includes MoMA, the Mono Migration Analyzer.  MoMA, which runs
natively on .NET or on the Mono framework, helps developers quantify the
number of changes required to run their .NET application in a Linux
environment. In an analysis of 4600 .NET applications using MoMA, 45 percent
of the applications required no code changes to work with Mono. An
additional 24 percent of the applications were shown to require fewer than
six code changes to run on Mono.

Mono project enables cross-platform development
One of the most recent successful uses of the Mono framework is the rapid
development of MoonlightTM, an open-source, Mono-based plug-in version of
Microsoft Silverlight, which is used to create and host next-generation,
rich interactive applications. Linden Labs also uses Mono in the development
of their Second Life project to improve the stability and speed of scripts -
particularly calculation-intensive ones.

"Deploying Mono as the primary scripting engine on the Second Life Grid has
had enormously positive effects for our Residents," said Jim Purbrick,
technical director, Core Platform, Linden Lab. "In fact, some of the
internal benchmarking we've done has shown that scripts running on Mono run
up to 220 times faster. The speed and reliability that Mono provides opens
up new possibilities for content creators and improves the experience of
even causal users."

Unity Technologies, a leading 3-D game development tool provider, uses Mono
for its game development system.

"We chose Mono because of its performance and cross-language capability,"
said Joachim Ante, CTO and co-founder at Unity Technologies. "Mono provides
Unity's diverse developer community the ability to work in such languages as
JavaScript, C# and Boo, resulting in a very short learning curve and
immediate familiarity with scripting in Unity.  The latest version of Mono
represents significant improvements in stability and performance and makes
it even easier for us to develop feature-rich cross-platform applications
than run on the Web, Windows, OS X, Nintendo* Wii* and soon the iPhone*."

Mono 2.0 streamlines development of .NET-based applications
New features available in Mono 2.0 include:
?    Easy installation - A one-click install feature for SUSE(R) Linux
Enterprise and openSUSE(R), as well as easy-to-use installers for many of the
other supported platforms, including Windows and Mac OS X.
?    Comprehensive platform, hardware and API support - The Mono framework
supports a variety of platforms, including Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, BSD and
Windows; a variety of hardware options, such as x86, AMD 64, IA-64 (Itanium
2), EMT 64, PowerPC, ARM, S390 and S390x, SPARC and SPARC 9; all Microsoft
.NET 2.0 APIs, including ASP.NET <http://asp.net/>,
ADO.NET<http://ado.net/>and Windows.Forms; and C# 3.0 compiler with
LINQ support.
?    Performance upgrades - Improves scaling and performance for
ASP.NET<http://asp.net/>,
ADO.NET <http://ado.net/> and  Mono runtime.
?    Useful downloads -  A Virtual Machine image that comes with a
ready-to-use development environment, as well as many open source Web and
desktop .NET applications, including the ASP.NET <http://asp.net/> Starter
Kits and other demos. An updated version of the MoMA tool, with improved
reporting, is also available.

ISV support for Mono 2.0
"With the inclusion of Microsoft .NET 2.0 desktop components in the Mono 2.0
release, we will now be able to deliver the same graphical administration
experience across over 125 platforms," said Krishna Ganugapati, vice
president of Engineering at Likewise Software. "Giving customers a common
way to view and manage all of their systems in a heterogeneous enterprise
environment helps conserve valuable people resources, improves security and
makes auditors much happier which translates to goodness for everyone."

Steve G. Bjorg, chief technology officer at MindTouch, said, "MindTouch
built their open source enterprise collaboration and integration platform,
Deki, on the Mono framework. MindTouch Deki enables customers to 'webify'
legacy applications, bridge multiple applications with a common interface
and provide a more usable interface to systems and databases. Since the core
of MindTouch Deki is implemented in C# and deployed to Linux using Mono, we
are excited to see Mono 2.0 adding C# 3.0 compiler support, including
support for Language Integrated Query (LINQ)."

Availability
Mono 2.0 is available now and can be downloaded at
www.mono-project.com/downloads . For more information about the Mono
project, visit www.mono-project.com.

About the Mono Project
The Mono Project is an open source initiative sponsored by Novell to develop
a UNIX* version of the Microsoft .NET development framework. Hosted at
www.mono-project.com, the Mono project provides all the necessary software
to develop and run .NET client and server applications on Linux, Solaris,
Mac OS X, Windows and Unix. Mono has an active and enthusiastic contributing
community and is positioned to become the leading choice for development of
Linux applications.

About Novell
Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) delivers the best engineered, most interoperable
Linux* platform and a portfolio of integrated IT management software that
helps customers around the world reduce cost, complexity and risk. With our
infrastructure software and ecosystem of partnerships, Novell harmoniously
integrates mixed IT environments, allowing people and technology to work as
one. For more information, visit www.novell.com.

###

(1) Source: IDC Survey Sponsored by Microsoft, 2007 Mission Critical North
American Application Platform Study, August 2007

Novell, Mono, openSUSE and SUSE are registered trademarks and Moonlight is a
trademark of Novell, Inc. in the United States and other countries. * All
third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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Page One PR

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