Well, here's a piece of very good news, although still no 100% confirmed in my opinion. According to OMGUbuntu and a variety of other sources from the just-concluded Ubuntu Developer Summit, the decision has been made to drop Mono from the base Ubuntu 12.04 distribution - whether it will remain in the repositories is not yet clear. That makes me personally so happy! Mono is covered with the stench of Microsoft, and I will be happy not to have to run my "nomono.sh" script as much in the future.
Flushing Mono down the toilet, where it belongs, will require removing Tomboy (no loss), and either replacing Banshee or modifying it to remove Mono dependency. Well worth the effort.
jw
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One of the places where I read this had mentioned that Rhythmbox would likely return as the Banshee replacement (partly because the problems in Rhythmbox are easier to fix than the ones in Banshee).
I'm very happy to read this news, because I've never understood why Mono and its 2 or 3 main showcase applications ever got installed by default for ANY Linux distribution. None of them are "make or break" apps. How hard would it be to have an additional post-install script which explains Mono and asks the user if he/she wants to install Mono and those apps? It's been years since Mono first came on the scene, and we still do not have a clear statement from Microsoft that explicitly clears developers who use Mono from any future IP infringement attack/lawsuit.
I honestly tried using Banshee, but it's unstable and slow. Mono might be nice for some developers to code in but every Mono application I've come across has been a disappointment. Rhythmbox has generally been pretty reliable for me and Clementine is pretty good too.
I figured this day would be coming, when Mono would simply be dropped altogether. Microsoft will always keep the .NET Framework specifically tailored for Windows, so to me Mono is a losing battle. The same with Moonlight. I haven't discovered anything that works 100% with Moonlight, which tells me that Microsoft couldn't care less about creating a true cross operating system development platform. We already know that Microsoft despises anything that's not ... well... Microsoft.
Mono is banished, Silverlight is about to expire and Flash Mobile too.
Take a deep breath and enjoy it.
I will hold a small party for the retirement of nomono.sh
Now lets see if we can do something about getting rid of software patents.
(I think the zdnet red Submit button below is patented by someone else.)
Darn, I actually use Tomboy! Any GNU alternatives, particuarly with cross-platform syncing?
"Gnote" is Gnomes port of Tomboy from mono to C++!