Can Mono be a Target Platform for Desktop Applications?

Posted Wed, 04/11/2009 - 09:11 by Itsu Tamam
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Mono is project I truly admire. Deploying a .NET WinForms application on non-Windows platform is really something I need. But can I really do that? One of the major incentives to move from the web to the desktop is to achieve a much better look and feel ( - I know, there are other very good reasons :-) )

 

In real life, we (almost) never build the GUI from scratch. We use control bundles, such as Telerik, Infragistics, etc. Otherwise we can spend ages refining our GUI, and the result will probably won't be as good.  

 

So, we want to use 3rd party controls libraries. We also want the multi-platform capability. Can these two live together? Maybe, in the future. Currently the major GUI controls products are not Mono-Compatible. Here's a compatibility list from Mono web site.

 

What can we do, besides waiting? Well, I currently don't have a real solution - except for building ugly applications :-)  

 

Will be more than happy to get your suggestions and ideas.

Comments

by igorz - 04/11/2009 - 11:17

I am pessimistic with that.
There are options, but they are the same unreal.:)

1. use GTK# which is supported on Linux and Windows as well. You will have a lot of bugs and will enjoy to solve them.

2. go with WPF (Mono implements it's Moonlight to support WPF on Linux)

3. contribute Mono with missing implementation of WinForms.

4. use Java :)

unfortunately there is no way to get ready WinForms application to run on Linux.
don't forget about unmanage code and interop with win32 which is normal in WinForms application.