Microsoft Brings Silverlight 2 to Linux

Here I am, actually using Silverlight on one of my sites (as part of a deal I had nothing to do with), I have the Firefox Silverlight plug-in running on my work-supplied Windows PC, and I even tried Moonlight in Linux. Didn't work all that well in Linux, so I pulled it. Since then I pulled Tomboy Notes and F-Spot Photo Manager, too. (And since the Ubuntu laptop died and I moved to the Debian Lenny laptop, there's no Mono there at all.)

I didn't pull those apps because I'm opposed to Mono. As I've said previously, I'm not deliriously happy with Mono but not wholly against it either.

The problem isn't that these three apps (Moonlight, Tomboy, F-Spot) use Mono. Instead, I've found equivalent and/or better apps that don't use Mono.

And however I feel about Mono itself, I wonder why developers have gone to such lengths to create applications that aren't as good as those coded in other ways. The reason these "non-Mono" apps are, in my view, better has nothing to do with Mono. It's just my observation as an unwashed, non-developing user.

I've written at length how Gthumb is better than F-Spot. Gthumb is so good, it's pretty much become my main image editor in Linux. I even stopped using digiKam, which has more features; I just like Gthumb better for my particular use. It does about 95 percent of what I need it to do, and it does so in a very elegant way. And it allows for the arrangement of photos with actual directories created by me, the user instead of a database that a) I'm in perpetual fear of its going kaput and b) cannot be accessed by other applications. With Gthumb, my images are there for any other app to use.

digiKam is, as I mentioned, more powerful, but it's a bit ham-fisted. I'm not saying I won't consider using it again, but for now, Gthumb is my No. 1 image-editing and -archiving app.

I know that F-Spot aims to be an iPhoto clone. The problem is that a) it's not close enough and b) I really don't like iPhoto at all, and having lost the database for a many-thousand-image installation, I'm pretty much against it.

Gnote is a "clone" of Tomboy Notes. As I understand it, Gnote was created specifically to offer the functionality of Tomboy without the need for Mono.

I can confirm that Gnote works just like Tomboy. When you install Gnote, it automatically finds any Tomboy notes you've created and copies them over to Gnote.

Also, Gnote loads much faster than Tomboy. And for a notes app, fast loading is very important.

Now onto Moonlight/Silverlight. The bar is low. Flash is the 10,000-ton gorilla in the room. How can Microsoft expect to unseat a ubiquitous, closed "standard" with another closed standard? First the Internet, then the WWW -- they didn't take off because they were built on closed, patented systems.

Flash's ubiquity, to me anyway, is a fluke. And the sooner that fluke is replaced by something free and open, the better.

Hopefully HTML 5 will take care of this ...

I've read about the patent promise for Mono, how Novell tries to snag customers by selling "patent protection," something that, conveniently, no other distribution can (or in most cases, even wants) to offer.

That leaves a bad taste. Very. Bad. Taste.

But on a strictly technological basis, what is Mono bringing us that we need so desperately?

Tomboy, F-Spot and Moonlight aren't making that case, at least to this user.

And how long before Mozilla's Songbird overtakes that other well-known Mono app, Banshee? For all I know (and I'm admitting I don't), Amarok has already overtaken it in terms of features.

I know nothing about GNOME-do ... and I wonder if GNOME 3 will be able to function without Mono. Anybody care to enlighten me?