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I love programming with .NET, especially C# 3.0, .NET 3.5 and WPF. But what I especially like is that with Mono .NET is really platform-independent.

Now I heard about the Olive Project in Mono. I couldn't find some kind of Beta.

Does it already work? Have any of you made any experiences with it?

Edit: I know about Moonlight. But I want a standalone WPF application. And because of Moonlight I hope WPF on Linux will become true.

A: 

I heard a podcast interviewing miguel de icaza (the mono lead) maybe a few weeks ago, so that would have been maybe mid-december 2008, and he said that they had no WPF support at all yet.

Orion Edwards
+1  A: 

From the Olive home page:

Olive is unsupported, should be considered as experimental software, and since it implements a shifting API there are no guarantees of any kind about the stability of the API.

I doubt anyone would have used it in a real project.

HTH, Kent

Kent Boogaart
+8  A: 

You'll have better luck working with Moonlight, which targets the Silverlight API, which is a subset of full WPF.

edit: Sure, Silverlight isn't "intended" for the desktop, but there's no reason why you can't embed a silverlight engine in your application. It's been done before, such as for the Mac NY Times Reader

more edit: see Miguel's post on Standalone Silverlight Applications

Jimmy
Moonlight is up to Silverlight 1.0 now. And they've got a slick installer for it (there's a video of the Linux Moonlight install out there, maybe on Tim Heuer's blog).
jcollum
+2  A: 

From the mono website

At this point, the Mono project does not have plans to implement Windows Presentation Foundation APIs as part of the project.

Moonlight is an implementation of silverlight, which is a browser based flash like technology based on a subset of WPF.

In my opinion the choice to not implement WPF is monos biggest mistake. As WPF is fast becoming the default choice for new .net user interfaces. See this blog for more.

trampster
"As WPF is fast becoming the default choice for new .net user interfaces." -- I find this comment interesting, its been over two years since WPF has come out, and I've yet to find anything that uses it. Do you have some links to some things that use it I could check out? Thanks!
jpobst
Visual Studio 2010 will be built using WPF, Microsoft surface uses WPF
trampster
the new live messenger as well
Jab
PB12 will be generating WPF apps, scheduled for next year.
Anders K.
Moonlight is indicated as WPF "offline" rendered (Out-of-browser capabilities and offline support). But still in roadmap (http://www.mono-project.com/MoonlightRoadmap)
Luca
+5  A: 

Mono is in a bit of an uncomfortable position when it comes to Microsoft APIs such as Winforms and WPF. A subset of the .Net technology is an ECMA standard, but free implementations of these APIs are probably on shakier legal ground. I believe this was a large factor in the covenant between Novell and Microsoft, which is good for Novell customers. But people who use Mono that aren't customers of Novell aren't protected. For this reason a lot of people in the F/OSS community look askance at Mono despite its technical merits.

For this reason, Gtk# will always be preferred, since it is truly Free. Many people consider it to be superior to Winforms anyway. As far as WPF is concerned, it will almost certainly be a low priority for Novell. They may implement it eventually, but I would expect Moonlight to be the closest you could get for the forseeable future.


Since posting this, Microsoft has extended their covenant to anybody who implements the ECMA 334 & 335 standards.

Adam Lassek