The following packages will be REMOVED
cli-common* gbrainy* libappindicator0.1-cil* libart2.0-cil* libgconf2.0-cil*
libglade2.0-cil* libglib2.0-cil* libgmime2.4-cil* libgnome-vfs2.0-cil*
libgnome2.24-cil* libgnomepanel2.24-cil* libgtk2.0-cil*
liblaunchpad-integration1.0-cil* libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil*
libmono-addins0.2-cil* libmono-cairo2.0-cil* libmono-corlib2.0-cil*
libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil* libmono-management2.0-cil* libmono-posix2.0-cil*
libmono-security2.0-cil* libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil* libmono-system2.0-cil*
libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil* libndesk-dbus1.0-cil* mono-2.0-gac*
mono-csharp-shell* mono-gac* mono-gmcs* mono-runtime* tomboy*
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 31 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

Monogenea

To remove Mono from your shiny new desktop installation of Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx enter the following command (after taking the usual precautions like backups of your data etc):

sudo apt-get purge libmono* libgdiplus cli-common libglitz-glx1 libglitz1

[UPDATE: Many thanks to Directhex who pointed out my error regarding the need to remove libsqlite0. I've removed it from the command above. He also requested (you can see in his comment below), that I mention that the mononono package is no longer particularly effective at preventing Mono from being installed. Thanks for the prompt Jo, I was going to but I just forgot.]

This is almost the same one as used for the Karmic Koala release (9.10), and for me the result of the above command was as follows:

The following packages will be REMOVED
cli-common* f-spot* gbrainy* libart2.0-cil* libflickrnet2.2-cil* libgconf2.0-cil* libgdiplus* libglade2.0-cil* libglib2.0-cil* libglitz-glx1* libglitz1* libgmime2.4-cil* libgnome-keyring1.0-cil* libgnome-vfs2.0-cil*
libgnome2.24-cil* libgnomepanel2.24-cil* libgtk2.0-cil* liblaunchpad-integration1.0-cil* libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil* libmono-addins0.2-cil* libmono-cairo2.0-cil* libmono-corlib2.0-cil* libmono-data-tds2.0-cil* libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil* libmono-posix2.0-cil* libmono-security2.0-cil* libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil* libmono-sqlite2.0-cil* libmono-system-data2.0-cil* libmono-system-runtime2.0-cil* libmono-system-web2.0-cil* libmono-system2.0-cil* libmono2.0-cil* libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil* libndesk-dbus1.0-cil* libnunit2.4-cil* mono-2.0-gac* mono-gac* mono-runtime* tomboy*
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 40 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
After this operation, 49.8MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?

I chose to accept this and proceeded. Of course YMMV so please check carefully before hitting that enter key. The purge switch of this command removes any configuration files as well as the packages themselves.

Compared to Ubuntu 9.10, in 10.04 there appears to be just one new Mono dependant application called gbrainy (in the Games menu) which is described thus: “a platform to train memory, arithmetical and logical capabilities with many sorts of different exercises of different difficulty levels”.

Unfortunately it appears as though the “training” objective of gbrainy might not be realised…

Over the last year or so, the BBC have carried out an experiment which examined “brain trainer” games. Subsequent analysis of the data found that these brain trainers are an empty promise as reported here in The Guardian:

Practising brain-training games will improve your performance on brain-training games, but that effect will not transfer to other aspects of brain function. They will not make you brainier, so you may as well just pootle around on the internet.

It seems that not much grey matter will be lost by removing the gbrainy package then

Gnote and Getting Things Gnome

For a very similar alternative to Tomboy try Gnote, and as I like task-related management too I also recommend the excellent GTG [Getting Things Gnome] application. To install these two simply type: sudo apt-get install gnote gtg.

The alternative for F-Spot I usually use is a combination of gthumb and Gimp, the latter of which has been removed from the default Lucid desktop install to make space for other things. Both of these applications can be easily installed by a simple sudo apt-get install gthumb gimp command. However there is now a new kid on the block which looks quite exciting called shotwell. Shotwell will be the default camera/image app in the forthcoming Fedora 13 distribution replacing gthumb (as it has no dependencies on Mono in the default desktop installation). It is also, I was pleased to discover, available in the main Lucid repository so can be installed using either the command line: sudo apt-get install shotwell or you can use the very easy and graphically attractive Ubuntu Software Centre (as you can for the other applications listed above also). This is how Fedora describe Shotwell in the preliminary release notes:

Shotwell is an open source photo organizer designed for the GNOME desktop environment and has replaced Gthumb by default in Fedora 13. It supports the following features:

• import photos from any digital camera supported by gPhoto
• automatically organize events containing photos taken at the same time
• use tags to organize your photo collection
• edit non-destructively when altering photos, without ruining originals or using disk space for each copy
• publish photos to Facebook, Flickr or Picasa
• one-click auto-enhancement
• rotate, mirror, and crop photos
• reduce red-eye and adjust the exposure, saturation, tint, and temperature of your photos
• edit any photo, even if it’s not imported to the Shotwell library

I haven’t used Shotwell yet but it sounds like a good one to try out.

There you have it and hopefully that will be it for another 6 months on this subject.

Whoah! Hold on everyone. Let me don my asbestos suit first will you.

Thanks.

Right then. I have been thinking about this post for some time and I think the time is probably right for pressing the old “publish” button.

I am not trying to incite riots or wars in the halls of residence or corridors of power but Canonical/Ubuntu is starting to catch more “bad karma” than is healthy for it IMHO.

• Let’s start with Mono. Yep. It’s been a prickly thorn for many and the concerns expressed are not going away. There’s no point in raking over the old ground; it is just one of the bad-karma attractants in a growing list.
• Then we have Ubuntu One. Proprietary, closed, caused much debate and friction when announced and now the possibility of a Windows version too.
• Next comes dumping GIMP, OOo and other much-loved applications from the default installation of versions of the forthcoming distribution.
• Then the discussion about what closed/proprietary applications should be made available in the Ubuntu repositories.
• Then we have the change of the default search engine from Google to Microsoft Yahoo.
• Then Matt Asay joins as COO which should be, and probably is, good news. Matt is well known, respected and experienced, yet some of his prodigious public commentary tugs at the heartstrings of many a Freedom Fighter.

I don’t really want to comment on the individual points above; the point is that this list is growing…

I really like Ubuntu. I use it everywhere, I help in the Ubuntu-uk irc channel when I can and we [our company] promote Ubuntu to our customers and I [as an individual] to friends and family.

What concerns me is not any particular item in the list above: some I care about, others I do not; as I am sure many of you will do too. It is the increasing volume of criticism and vitriol as a whole. It is getting louder. This, I believe, is indicative of a turning tide that, if we are not careful, will result in Ubuntu losing popularity and more of the FOSS community exercising it’s freedom.

I’m pretty thick-skinned (I think I will need to be with this post!) so if you think I am barking up the wrong tree, or just plain barking, then say so. But I am noticing increasing criticism and anti-Ubuntu rhetoric which is not just because it is becoming more popular, although that is certainly one factor.

Something is changing and I am not sure it is for the good of Ubuntu or our community.

Some of it is surely to do with Microsoft’s Community Promise made back in July 2009, but I doubt that is really the only reason for the attenuation. I do wonder if Mono might just simply be losing some of its lustre. In August Blackduck reported how the amount of code being written for FOSS projects using C# was pretty negligible at just 1.33% and that growth in C# usage over a 12 month period was virtually zero.

There were also some rather nasty and personal attacks which did nothing to help our community at large nor the reputation of the individuals’ concerned so maybe people have consciously, or subconsciously, decided to just shut-up for a while?

Quite recently Microsoft, along with Intel, announced that they will ship Silverlight on Linux as opposed to using the Microsoft/Novell sponsored Mono project called Moonlight. OK, admittedly this announcement was only for Moblin Linux, but hey, since when has Microsoft ever been transparent about it’s long term objectives or plans? Perhaps, Mono and Moonlight were just too heavyweight for Moblin devices (netbooks and smart-phones typically), or maybe there is more to it. It could be a very good start to a typical Microsoft "Embrace, Extend & Extinguish" strategy. Who knows? But it certainly isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of Mono and Moonlight is it?

The awkward question: If it’s that easy to port Microsoft Silverlight to Linux, why does the Moonlight project exist at all?

“I’m really clear about our commitment to Moonlight. I see the work we’re doing with Miguel and Moonlight as core to our strategy for delivering implementations for Linux,” says Goldfarb, protesting, perhaps, a little too much. ®

Anyhow, my personal opinion of Mono hasn’t changed much. There are no Mono applications in Ubuntu that make me go weak at the knees and get all excited; far from it in fact:

• I’ve never really had any need for Tomboy at all and since discovering Getting Things Gnome my jotted notes and todos all go in this great little Python task keeping application anyway. If you have used, or ever wanted to use Tomboy in the past however there is now a clone written in C++ called Gnote. This is in the Karmic “universe” repository and can be installed either from Synaptic, the new Ubuntu Software Centre (now spelt correctly if you use an en_GB locale) or by typing sudo apt-get install gnote.
• When I last used F-Spot, which was probably back in Gutsy or Hardy days I reckon, it annoyed me that the application wouldn’t automatically delete the pictures off my camera after importing. GThumb did and always has; so no big deal there then. There is also a new kid on the block called Solang that is in the Karmic repos too. I haven’t tried it in anger myself yet but I’ve heard good things from others.
• Media Players/Managers? “Banshee!” I hear you cry. Well, I’ve never tried it because I don’t have Mono on my Ubuntu desktop or laptops so I can’t say if I like or not as an application. On my Ubuntu machines, the only music player I have tried and actually really liked, is Songbird. There are still a few features missing, but the forthcoming 1.4 release is looking like it will plug some of these gaps. Songbird looks, feels and works fine for my needs.

On the 15th October a very important figure in our community penned his own contribution to this discussion. Jeremy Allison, of Samba fame, wrote a well considered letter essentially calling on the major GNU/Linux distributions to move Mono outside of their default and core repositories. It’s something others, including myself, have discussed before, but likely with a lot less weight than Jeremy’s comments will surely carry.

… I think it is time for the Mono implementation and applications that use it to be moved into the “risky” category, until the patent situation around it is deemed to be truly safe to use by default in Free Software.

Microsoft isn’t playing games any more by merely threatening to assert patents. Real lawsuits have now occurred and the gloves are off against Free Software. Moving Mono and its applications to the “restricted” repositories is now just plain common sense.

Anyway, back to the reason for this post.

In the latest, shiniest, bestest, release of Ubuntu to date, and it really is a cracking release, the desktop version of Karmic Koala (version 9.10) contains two Mono dependent applications in the default install along with the Mono VM and associated libraries etc.

Now, this time, we have 3 ways to go Mono free:

1. Visit Jo Shield’s blog and get Chicken Little Remix (CLR). Chicken Little Remix (CLR) provides a solution for users who wish to use Ubuntu but would prefer it to not contain any Mono-based software. This 2nd release of CLR, based on Ubuntu 9.10, comes as a livecd with it’s own unique desktop wallpaper and also features replacement applications where appropriate.

 

2. Use the KDE based Kubuntu instead of Ubuntu, which uses Gnome. (Thanks Mark for pointing out my omission in the comments below)

 

3. Install the regular Ubuntu distribution and then remove the applications and their supporting packages*. The simple command required goes like this [Update] Thanks to Jo who mentioned the 3 libraries that should also be removed [/Update]:

   sudo apt-get purge libmono* libgdiplus cli-common libsqlite0 libglitz-glx1 libglitz1

   Which should reply with something similar to:

   The following packages will be REMOVED
cli-common* f-spot* libart2.0-cil* libflickrnet2.2-cil* libgconf2.0-cil*
libgdiplus* libglade2.0-cil* libglib2.0-cil* libgmime2.2a-cil*
libgnome-keyring1.0-cil* libgnome-vfs2.0-cil* libgnome2.24-cil*
libgnomepanel2.24-cil* libgtk2.0-cil* libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil*
libmono-addins0.2-cil* libmono-cairo2.0-cil* libmono-corlib2.0-cil*
libmono-data-tds2.0-cil* libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil* libmono-posix2.0-cil*
libmono-security2.0-cil* libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil* libmono-sqlite2.0-cil*
libmono-system-data2.0-cil* libmono-system-web2.0-cil*
libmono-system2.0-cil* libmono2.0-cil* libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil*
libndesk-dbus1.0-cil* mono-2.0-gac* mono-gac* mono-runtime* tomboy*
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 34 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
After this operation, 47.8MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?

NB: This command was tested on a default installation. The purge switch is designed to remove configuration data too. If you have any important information on your system that might be dependent on these applications, please do your research and backup or copy it first. I test the command in a clean Virtual Machine build before using it on a live system: YMMV.

* If you are aware of any other packages that can, or should be removed, please let me know and I will update the post.

Depending on your vigilance or need, you may wish to install the package called Mononono which will keep a look out for you and alert you if an application tries to install any Mono components.

For those of you who do not happen to be scholars of ancient Egyptian history, the picture at the top of this article is of the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten regarded by some as the first Monotheist:

Akhenaten tried to bring about a departure from traditional religion that in the end would not be accepted. After his death, traditional religious practice was gradually restored, and when some dozen years later rulers without clear rights of succession from the Eighteenth Dynasty founded a new dynasty, they discredited Akhenaten and his immediate successors, referring to Akhenaten himself as ‘the enemy’ in archival records.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia under several free licences.

Free and Open Source Software projects are built using a wide variety of programming languages. Blackduck who study this kind of thing have released some interesting data regarding the use of various languages to develop FOSS applications.

C# (the language of choice for Mono advocates) is languishing in 10th place behind Perl, Python, PHP, Java and many not insignificant others.

FOSS Language use

And is doesn’t appear to be growing by anything other than what looks like a statistical anomaly.

Mono Growth

If one were to listen to some proponents of Mono/C# you might have been led to think that (to be read in a really deep voice like the old Carlsberg ads):

Yeah right.

My other foot has bells on it…

Anyway, about 1/2 way through the book I discovered something amazing. A reference to a psychological condition called:

Monomania

How on earth could a 19th century detective know about the long running saga of a rather large and bloated software stack designed, it seems, simply to drive a wedge into the FOSS community and act as a trojan horse for our most [ahem] loved convicted monopolist?

The Wikipedia informs us that:

Monomania (from Greek monos, one, and mania, mania) is a type of paranoia in which the patient has only one idea or type of ideas. Emotional monomania is that in which the patient is obsessed with only one emotion or several related to it; intellectual monomania is that which is related to only one kind of delirious idea or ideas.

In colloquial terms, the term monomania is often attached to subcultures that to the general public appear esoteric. However, the differences between monomania and passion can be very subtle and difficult to recognize.

Truth is, of course Mr Whicher couldn’t have known. No one could have written such a tale of intrigue, double-crossing and skulduggery. But then neither could one have imagined the horrific tale of poor little Saville Kent’s untimely demise.

I was minded to post this piece mainly because I had just read a rather well put together history of the Mono saga so far by The Mad Hatter.

If this story doesn’t contain any monomaniacs then I’m a March Hare!

Lets just assume for the moment that this promise means what they say it means (forgetting about the partial implementations exclusion and the fact that the promise needed to be made in the first place) and it makes Mono totally safe to use now, even in countries with broken patent laws. I still won’t be using Mono. Mono is a useful tool for solving the problem “how on earth am I going to run all this .Net code I wrote when I switch to Linux?” I for one don’t have that problem, but for those that do, Mono is the tool for the job.

The reason I won’t be using Mono is that the .Net framework is already embraced by Microsoft, it is already extended by Microsoft. It was from the beginning and will probably always remain so. Mono is playing catch up and people want to be using the leader. This goes for Moonlight and Silverlight too. Silverlight 2 came out, some misguided websites moved to it, Moonlight 2 is in progress, but following. The only glimmer of hope for Mono as something that is more than a specific problem solving tool is GTK#. In this, the Free software community is taking the upper hand by extending Mono, in ways that Microsoft won’t follow. Maybe if .Net/GTK# applications become the norm on Windows this would be a good thing overall. Personally I will stick to Python/GTK on Ubuntu for my fairly limited desktop app programming requirements.

I picked up the story from The H where they’ve done a great job of describing most of the new features in a single paragraph.

One of the biggest new features is the ability to automatically organise library files across multiple folders based on track metadata, such as artist and album information. In addition to several performance improvements to features like search, Songbird 1.2 now supports 2-way syncing with iTunes, which is especially useful for users who purchase songs in the iTunes Music Store. Songs added to Songbird can also be synced back into iTunes for syncing with iPods and iPhones. Last.fm support has been included in Songbird for some time now, however, users can now access even more artist, track, album and tag information. A new 10-band equalizer has been added to Songbird to let audiophiles tweak the frequency response of audio playback.

With the ever expanding feature set and the superb extensibility thanks to their Mozilla platform pedigree we have a really good alternative to the “other” much touted music player based on Mono. I know which one I prefer.

Songbird, incidentally, was the only music player I found on Ubuntu that would sync with my iPod Nano 4th Gen. And that was the previous release of Songbird too. With iTunes synchronisation I think I have just found the last piece of the puzzle to get my wife off Windows once and for all.

Thanks to all the community and developers behind Songbird. I can’t wait to get this new release installed and give it a work out.

For those who don’t know what Mono is, from their website:

Mono is a cross platform, open source .NET development framework.

Two blog posts have caught my attention in the past couple of days and should be mentioned, one on either side of the debate and interestingly that is one from a developer and one from a user. Thankfully these two posts and most of the comments attached to them have been free from the personal attack and verbal abuse that has been written on several mailing lists and forums recently. Those don’t have a place in a decent debate, I will not condone them by linking.

First the developer.

Jo Shields writes well and clearly has a lot to say. This is a well written piece that articulates the position of a software developer who clearly likes what Mono has to offer.

I recommend you read it and consider carefully what Jo has to say.

The other article, from a user and expressed in plain and heartfelt language, tells us why he feels Mono is not for him.

I also recommend you read that one too and consider his position.

Welcome back.

What strikes me with these posts is how technical and abstract the position of the developer is and how emotional and personal the position of the user is. It is a very clear distinction and one that is probably at the heart of this disagreement.

Interestingly, the developer seems to inadvertently (I assume) be making the case for Mono dependent applications being removed from a default install in his final point in the “Why it is not a threat” section:

The layering of escape routes is extensive in Mono, especially Mono in Debian/Ubuntu. In the first instance, the contentious Microsoft-sourced non-ISO libraries such as System.Windows.Forms are not included by default, and are rarely used in Free applications anyway (because WinForms looks like ass, amongst other things). If a reason is found to remove these non-standardised libraries, then bam, they’re gone – without harming Free apps. Secondly, if a more severe change is required, then the Mono packages can be patched to remove the infringement. If more drastic changes are required, as mentioned above, then the applications can also be patched to support any core changes. And, taking it one step further, if the whole of Mono needs to be pulled, then applications can be ported. The porting process would potentially be slow and painful, and cause great harm to an application’s future rate of development (although no worse than if the app was written in the target language from day one), but nobody who has written an app they care about would simply throw their hands in the air and say “never mind, it was fun, but the Man says I have to stop now”.

The user’s post is emotional and from the heart. As a user myself I believe this perspective should not be regarded in any way less important or valuable than the technical position; both are just as valid.

The bone of contention for me is Mono. I remove it. I don’t like it. I refuse to use it. It rubs me the wrong way. Anything that starts with Microsoft and goes via the sellout, Novell, cannot be good.

I know that Microsoft is opposed to the existence of Linux. That have said so, often and stridently. I know that Novell caved in and did not stand up for FOSS when they had the chance. They have since apologized, sort of, but the damage is done. Other companies did not follow suit, including Red Hat and Canonical. I respect them for this as much as I detest Novell for selling us down the drain.

My perspective on the Mono thing is from that of a user and not a developer. I really fail to see why anyone would want to build new applications on top of a framework that has so many unanswered questions and causes so much angst in the community as a whole. We have plenty of other solutions that are – if not 100% free from controversy – certainly far less likely to end up requiring the kind of backtracking or complete re-writing that Jo describes above.

I think the problem many of us have with Mono will not go away, irrespective of what, or how much, the developers say. When I first removed Mono from Ubuntu back on Hardy, I did not know, nor had read anything about the Mono controversy before. It was simply an “itch I wanted to scratch”. I was unhappy with Mono being in my desktop OS for non-technical and personal reasons. I tried removing it and found that it worked so I wrote a post on how to remove Mono from Hardy. What amazed me was the huge surge in traffic to my lowly blog and the number of comments it attracted. That was in August last year.

The fact is that there are many, many “users” of Linux who simply do not want Mono dependant applications to be included by default in their distribution of choice: Ubuntu. The opinion of developers that Mono is great – as Jo so eloquently says himself – in the end carries little or no weight with users:

Why Mono is desirable

That’s a question which depends on whom is being asked.

If you’re asking a user, then the answer is “it’s not”, any more than a Scheme compiler or LOLCODE interpreter.

If you’re asking a developer, then the answer is VERY different…

Mono clearly provides a useful and good tool for developers to [ahem] develop things, but there are many other less controversial solutions which are as independent from Microsoft as it is possible to be. Surely these should be chosen over a framework that carries so much baggage and ill-feeling? Fedora are moving in that direction and appear to be picking up users at Ubuntu’s expense.

In short, I strongly believe Mono and applications that depend on it should reside in Multiverse and not in Main.

Finally, I think this sums up what many feel about Mono (A re-phrase one of Steve Ballmer’s most famous quotes):

“Linux Mono is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.”

From the Fedora Mailing List:

I have now changed the default panel configuration in F12 to include gnote instead of tomboy, and changed comps to make gnote default and tomboy optional.

This won’t replace tomboy in existing installations, but new installations will get gnote instead of tomboy.

This also means that gnote should show up on the live cd (where we excluded tomboy previously, due to no space for mono).

And further on the Wiki we see:

Gnote is installed by default in GNOME for this release replacing Tomboy. Gnote is a port of Tomboy from Mono to C++ and consumes less resources. Gnote is both an applet that can sit in your GNOME panel as well as a individual application you can run within other desktop environments. Fedora Desktop Live CD excluded Mono in the last releases due to lack of space. Gnote will be installed by default in the Live CD as well in this release. Tomboy is still available as a optional alternative.

This is the right thing to do IMHO. I have no problem with Mono being available in the repos for those who wish to use it. I would however much prefer that it is not installed by default on my distribution of choice.

Roy also posted a good article this morning explaining some of the key issues which make Mono such a bitter pill for many. If you care about what software you use, it is well worth reading.

Also, if you want to know how to remove Mono from your Ubuntu distribution:

• Hardy Heron
• Intrepid Ibex
• Jaunty Jackalope