WHAT IS MONO

Mono is a software platform designed to allow developers to easily create cross platform
applications. It is an open source implementation of Microsoft's .Net Framework based on
the ECMA standards for C# and the Common Language Runtime. We feel that by
embracing a successful, standardized software platform, we can lower the barriers to
producing great applications for Linux.

The Components
There are several components that make up Mono:
- C# Compiler - Mono's C# compiler is feature complete for C# 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0
(ECMA). A good description of the feature of the various versions is available on
Wikipedia.
- Mono Runtime - The runtime implements the ECMA Common Language
Infrastructure (CLI). The runtime provides a Just-in-Time (JIT) compiler, an Ahead-of-
Time compiler (AOT), a library loader, the garbage collector, a threading system and
interoperability functionality.
- Base Class Library - The Mono platform provides a comprehensive set of classes that
provide a solid foundation to build applications on. These classes are compatible with
Microsoft's .Net Framework classes.
- Mono Class Library - Mono also provides many classes that go above and beyond the
Base Class Library provided by Microsoft. These provide additional functionality that
are useful, especially in building Linux applications. Some examples are classes for
Gtk+, Zip files, LDAP, OpenGL, Cairo, POSIX, etc.

The Benefits
There are many benefits to choosing Mono for application development:
- Popularity - Built on the success of .Net, there are millions of developers that have
experience building applications in C#. There are also tens of thousands of books,
websites, tutorials, and example source code to help with any imaginable problem.
- Higher-Level Programming - All Mono languages benefit from many features of the
runtime, like automatic memory management, reflection, generics, and threading.
These features allow you to concentrate on writing your application instead of writing
system infrastructure code.
- Base Class Library - Having a comprehensive class library provides thousands of built
in classes to increase productivity. Need socket code or a hash table? There's no need
to write your own as it's built into the platform.
- Cross Platform - Mono is built to be cross platform. Mono runs on Linux, Microsoft
Windows, Mac OS X, BSD, and Sun Solaris, Nintendo Wii, Sony PlayStation 3, Apple
iPhone. It also runs on x86, x86-64, IA64, PowerPC, SPARC (32), ARM, Alpha, s390,
s390x (32 and 64 bits) and more. Developing your application with Mono allows you
to run on nearly any computer in existence.
- Common Language Runtime (CLR) - The CLR allows you to choose the programming
language you like best to work with, and it can interoperate with code written in any
other CLR language. For example, you can write a class in C#, inherit from it in
VB.Net, and use it in Eiffel. You can choose to write code in Mono in a variety of
programming languages.
Other Uses
- Scripting and Embedding - The Mono runtime can also be used to script your
applications by embedding it inside other applications, to allow managed code and
scripts to run in a native application.
- See Embedding Mono for details on how to embed Mono.
- See Scripting with Mono for strategies on how to script your application using the
Mono runtime.