On May 5, 1862, 4,000 Mexican loyalists defeated 8,000 French and revolting Mexican troops in the Battle of Puebla, an event celebrated around the world as Cinco de Mayo. Novell has chosen this day to release the first beta of Mono 1.0, an open source alternative to Microsoft's .Net framework.

Today's Mono release provides the first opportunity for developers outside the Mono community to evaluate the technology. It is the first of two betas scheduled to precede the planned June 30th release of Mono 1.0. The release includes pre-compiled packages for select platforms, including current Red Hat, Novell (SuSE), and Windows OSes.

According to the project's release notes, Mono provides a superior development environment for high productivity Linux and cross-platform development. It supports client, server, and Web services applications, and has already been used to develop several applications, including iFolder 3.0, F-Spot, and others.

Mono includes a C# compiler, an implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) and two stacks of APIs, one for Mono (Linux/Unix/Gnome), and one for Microsoft .Net. The Mono stack includes:

• Gtk# for GUI development
• Database providers for Postgres, MySQL, DB2, Sybase, SQLite, and Oracle
• LDAP libraries (Novell.LDAP)
• Complete cryptography stack
• Apache module integration
• Cairo graphics integration

The .Net stack includes:

• ASP.NET Web services
• ASP.NET Web forms
• Binary and SOAP remoting
• ADO.NET: connectivity to SQL Server and other databases

New in the beta release are a Global Assembly Cache and a split-up into about 30 packages that allow for better distribution granularity. The release also previews some Mono 2.0 features, such as System.Windows.Forms support.

The release is available now as source code, or as pre-compiled packages for Red Hat 9.0,Fedora Core 1, SUSE 9.0, SUSE SLES 8, and Windows 2000 and XP. A second beta release is expected June 1, with the first stable release shipping June 30th. The previous Mono release, version 0.30, fixed nearly 1,500 bugs, and came in February.

For more details, visit the project release notes.

For a detailed history of the Mono project, be sure to check out our Mono and DotGNU Hot Topics list.

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.