Mono is Dead. Long live... Wine?

Mono, the technology that enabled C# and the .NET runtime to run on platforms such as Linux, Mac, iOS and Android is dead. Well, Microsoft's stewardship of it is dead. Instead the torch is being passed to WineHQ, the makers of the popular open source Windows to Linux compatibility layer Wine.
The Mono project has been of massive importance to the world of game development. Basically if its a game engine that supports C# and runs on non-Windows platform, it most liked used Wine. These days though, .NET itself is cross platform, making continuation of the Mono project a lot less important.
Links
gamefromscratc...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Support : / gamefromscratch
GameDev News : gamefromscratc...
GameDev Tutorials : devga.me
Discord : / discord
Twitter : / gamefromscratch
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[@gamefromscratch]

Links gamefromscratch.com/mono-is-dead-love-live-wine/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *Support* : www.patreon.com/gamefromscratch *GameDev News* : gamefromscratch.com *GameDev Tutorials* : devga.me *Discord* : discord.com/invite/R7tUVbD *Twitter* : twitter.com/gamefromscratch -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[@iXPilot]

4:00 "Well over a decade. Maybe two decades". It was started in 1993, so it's over 3 decades now... :)

[@gamefromscratch]

Thank you so very much for making me feel oh so very old. ;)

[@misterkite]

Haven't looked at Mono in forever.. just checked the repo and see that I'm still credited for code I wrote back in 2003. Nice.

[@scotmcpherson]

There is a little misunderstanding here I think. Mono became the upstream of dotnet. Modern dotnet wouldn’t exist without mono.

[@timseguine2]

I don't think that is correct. Modern dotnet is based on dotnet core, which was AFAIK mostly a from scratch rewrite of the libs and VM.

[@apoclypse]

Was about to write this. The current .net is mono for the most part.

[@fltfathin]

what i heard from godot notes on C# things are moving around big time for .net5 unifying all c# stuff.

[@Dorgrin]

This.

[@Dimkar3000]

No, this is wrong. Upstream dotnet or dotnet core is another re-write from Microsoft

[@whtiequillBj]

one thing I find most interesting is that Microsoft handed it over to WINE. It means that they are in "communication", and probably don't have a bad relationship.

[@imeakdo7]

I really wish Microsoft open sources the Windows API so that wine can work perfectly

[@PixelMystifier]

@@imeakdo7 that will make wine better and make people leave windows, not so "Microsoft" moment

[@imeakdo7]

@@PixelMystifier they can keep people hooked to windows with onedrive. I'd say windows makes revenue from corporate users who use onedrive and not individuals anymore

[@Wkaelx]

Microsoft uses linux for azure cloud, maybe they need some proprietary software that is not avaiable natively and have to use wine or a internal fork/modification?

[@monad_tcp]

@@imeakdo7 It is open source, the code for Windows Server 2003 is floating on the internet for a while now.

[@HairyPixels]

"wine is an emulator or sorts". Wine HQ: Wine (originally an acronym for "Wine Is Not an Emulator")

[@igorthelight]

It's a translation layer. It's not an emulator but pretty close to it in terms of what it does.

[@randombleachfan]

Is it strange to think "Wine" A.K.A "Wine is not an Emulator" is recursive in it of itself?

[@timseguine2]

@@igorthelight Except the main technique behind the implementation of WINE is just HLE. And pretty much every other emulator that is implemented using HLE still calls itself an emulator. They just want to be different and contrarian because they don't do any CPU or coprocessor emulation. So? There were (not completed) XBOX emulators that were implemented in the exact same way with more or less the exact same philosophy, and none of them decided to insist they weren't xbox emulators.

[@nanno4522]

3:35

[@zeta0590]

​@randombleachfan GNU is also an acronym for GNU is Not Unix. We love our recursive acronyms

[@safebox36]

Damn, we really do live in a weird timeline. Microsoft giving stuff to the Linux community.

[@lpnp9477]

I would always be cautious about anything coming from them, even open source stuff.

[@DaisyAjay]

To be fair, not having a Linux version would make .NET a lot less valuable. Also, iirc they never licensed mono to implement the gui libraries. It's not a selfless act of Linux love at all.

[@angryralphs2516]

I think they're planning a project like aws of amazon. They've been renting hundreds of data center.

[@BastetFurry]

@@lpnp9477 they can't do much with Dotnet, if they pull weird crap it is forked faster than you can say "Developerdeveloperdeveloper" 😁

[@dawns2462]

@@lpnp9477 They poison everything they touch.

[@therealgunny]

Funny thing is Microsoft dropped .NET Core brand a few years ago and now it's just .NET like before but with the same features as .NET Core. I don't know why they can't name things over there.

[@rjhornsby]

because marketing sits on the throne of the naming conventions over there, and they have no idea about anything except marketing. It happens across the entire Microsoft organization. They do the same thing with XBox: Xbox S or Xbox X. Which is better? Wait which one did you say? They sound the same. They do it with Windows server: base or core? They do it all over the place in Azure: do you want “basic” or “standard”? Active Directory or Azure AD. no Entra. No, Entra ID.

[@therealgunny]

@@rjhornsby I wanted to mention some of these stuff too but didn't want to make my comment too long 😄 These naming problems have existed for over 20+ years. Funny enough, I went through all those names for Active Directory during my work.

[@AndyDentPerth]

@@therealgunny if you think the naming problems at product level are bad, try using their low-level Win32 string APIs with inconsistent and arbitrary multi-byte vs single-byte parameters and naming - this explains at least one generation of major virus vulnerabilities.

[@therealgunny]

@@AndyDentPerth In fact, I've used the Win32 APIs and I'm aware of the naming conventions. The ASCII vs Unicode versions of the functions and parameters are a disaster. We still have left over parameters from Vista era somewhere in there too if not older versions of Windows.

[@hemerythrin]

They just renamed Remote Desktop to "Windows App". Yeah, nothing confusing about that. "What program do I need to install?" "The windows app"

[@Bunny501]

I feel sorry about Wine HQ getting Mono. I hope they rest and get better soon.

[@imeakdo7]

now if only Microsoft opened up the Windows API source code or even gave it to Wine... Wine would be complete within 2 years.

[@jasonenns5076]

@@imeakdo7that is an unreasonable request. Obviously Sony does not release the source code of their consoles. It is their intellectual property and they should not release their source if they do not have any desire to do so.

[@C1rnobyl]

​@@jasonenns5076I wish they would open source all of MS-DOS at the very least.

[@ruadeil_zabelin]

@@imeakdo7 Windows 2000 and XP sources have been leaked for a long time. And while i'm sure they had a sneak peak (they'd never admit to that), this doesn't really help them as much as you'd think though.

[@imeakdo7]

@@ruadeil_zabelin you seem to say that the windows source code is useless, if it is so useless then why do most apps could still work on windows XP? Like adobe stuff? Even XP way more compatible with those apps than wine, if they had a peek at them wouldn't wine work as well as windows?

[@AiryGallantry]

One of my friend's name is Mono. The title "Mono is dead" got me worried.

[@testacals]

@@uusfiyeyh I mean, mono mean one in english as well

[@bionic_batman]

If you had two friends named Mono, would they be called Stereo in that case?

[@PixelMystifier]

@@bionic_batman Here, Officer, the guy who gave my friends a heart attack from laugher

[@Fuscao_Preto]

​@@bionic_batmanWouldn't i have a surround group, 7 Monos and one woofer (🐶)

[@freedomgoddess]

@@testacals and rail means rail

[@TheEx404]

It was a legend in that era...😢😢😢

[@igorthelight]

Mono is the base for modern .NET ;-)

[@sicfxmusic]

Mono didn't age like a fine wi...

[@NJ-wb1cz]

@@sicfxmusic ...window

[@PixelMystifier]

@@NJ-wb1cz wii

[@pandaDotDragon]

good one 🙂

[@thedrunkmonkshow]

For some reason I reflexively got nervous by the title of the video but realistically it just makes sense to pass the torch since .NET fully supports what Mono was doing. But it goes to show you how even though Microsoft is like this never ending tower that pokes through the clouds, sometimes hitting it with a pebble the right way can begin a chain reaction that disrupts it's foundation forcing the renovations into something else.

[@iXPilot]

To be honest, I have mixed feelings about it: yes, it is useful for Wine, because it helps with legacy things, but on the other... Without WPF (GUI stuff with .NET) implementation it's not that useful and there are a lot of desktop software written with WPF. And Wine itself usually not interested in starting (new) large projects, so no WPF, MFC and so on - only the stuff which is being shipped with Windows (and still, to a some degree: not all DLLs have the priority). The motivation is understandable: to not disperse the resources (since most of the work is being done by Codeweavers), but still it's a bit sad.

[@everythingcouldbesimplify818]

Mono is always going to be remembered in our hearts

[@MillisecondFalcon]

I wonder if this will have any repercussions on MonoGame, or is MG separate enough from Mono to be unaffected? I also wish Microsoft hadn't dropped support for XNA - why is backwards compatability so hard to maintain?

[@nolram]

Mono and MonoGame are practically unrelated

[@sakamocat]

but, what will happen to all embedded mono projects? there is a C API that you can use to embed C# inside C applications, and mono not being avaliable makes me worried about the compat with those projects

[@VillageIDT]

Regardless of what Wine is said to stand for, it ultimately emulates Windows funtionality.

[@ThePyramidBox]

@VillageIDT - "Regardlessly from what the developers designed it like - I know better how was it done", sounds weird, isn't it?

[@JonBrase]

Arguably, it's just another Windows API implementation. The Win32 API was built to be implementable on multiple platforms.

[@Ralzone]

​@@ThePyramidBox If I understood correctly, VillageIDT said that Wine, ultimately, emulates Windows, which is not fully wrong, it's a compatibility layer. It translates Windows API calls into POSIX calls (Which is in their website). Instead of sounding like a rude person, you could have just added to his statement with something like: "Did you know that Wine actually works like this, and does this? It doesn't actually emulate Windows like a SNES emulator or other emulators would do" Doing that would actually benefit people reading the comments, as you would bring useful information to the table, instead of trying to turn it into a debate.

[@ThePyramidBox]

@@Ralzone Emulation in technical world literally means pretending to be the device, architecture or any other technical concept while not being it, Wine - doesn't emulate anything, even when doing system reports - it will report OS - with the name of the distribution, not Windows, not anything else - but your own name of distribution, if Wine emulated anything - then, it would be by concept sandboxed (that's why Waydroid is, in fact, emulation of Android - while being more tightly integrated into Linux - it is still, emulation), that's what many do not understand, and that's why we should make a clear border between emulation and translation, because programs which are executed using Wine - can be as well - harmful for the end-user PC, some of the viruses of mass destruction - are still working under Wine, also, OP's stand that Wine "emulates" Windows's "functionality" is ridiculously incorrect, Wine does not provide any Desktop Environment as in Windows, Wine is not a part of the core elements of Linux, Wine is not implementing Kernel Level Windows NT version but with FOSS license, it has nothing to do with standard Linux experience nor it has anything to do with providing any other functionality except - for providing support for Windows applications, I am not trying to be rude to anyone but implying that creator of software knows less than the person in the internet - is just ridiculously incorrect in many ways, and as you can see - I'm not saying that anyone is stupid here, the only thing which I am trying to bring - is that I think it is rude to ignore the developers of the software and how they intended the project to be, being misinformed is more harmful than knowing nothing

[@ruadeil_zabelin]

@@ThePyramidBox they're just being pedantic with that statement though. For all intents and purposes it does emulate; it just doesn't emulate the cpu itself.

[@blazernitrox6329]

I was getting ready to make an Embrace-Extend-Extinguish joke, but Microsoft's actually being totally chill on this one? HUH

[@emanuelrodriguezaires]

Just wanted to add that wine is also what steam proton uses. Great video as usual!

[@golvellius6855]

I wonder if they will implement mono into wine and disregard the name whatsoever. Or keep it or even change the name

[@vickylance]

Godot 4 stopped using Mono right?

[@ruadeil_zabelin]

Godot has had hostfxr (so dotnet runtime) stuff for quite a while now in the sources. I don't know if they have that enabled by default now though. Their .net support is still kinda bad in general.

[@thereisnospace]

dotnetbehavior doesnt roll of the tongue right

[@monad_tcp]

Wine is an emulator, its emulating the Win32 API

[@simonbooth4888]

Who's Stuart?

[@HerraHissi]

The acronym is either recursive or it literally states a glass of wine can't emulate computer hardware.

[@gamefromscratch]

I prefer to think the later.

[@DemiSupremi]

Compatibility layers are still a form of emulation. Unless you're dual booting everything you do with two oses is emulation. It's just wine doesn't emulate cpu instructions because they both use the same cpu.

[@GegoXaren]

WINE started out as an emulator... The name was a joke. Now it's not an Emulator now, though.

[@Ishrak-ed6lo]

Dotnet on Linux does not support UWP, WinForm, WPF ...

[@TheBrainDunne]

yes, that's is annoying.

[@rabdpnguin]

True, it's a bit annoying, but Avalonia fills that niche quite nicely

[@nolram]

All of those have Windows in their name and are Windows UI frameworks, they wouldn‘t make sense on Linux. If you want cross-platform UI you‘d use MAUI or Avalonia. It‘s like complaining that the X Window manager only works on Linux…

[@27182818284590452354]

So nothing of value is lost.

[@nngnnadas]

Ok, if MS gives a large donation to WINE it would be hillarious, especially 20 years ago.

[@naturalroyalflush]

I collect abandoned software. I shelter it in my c++ executable. Playing with C sharp. Typical OOP , everything buried in a multitude of layers.

[@GaryAus]

I am SO GLAD I did not tie myself anymore to any Microsoft programming language. Was burned HARD by Visual Basic.

[@therealpeter2267]

You probably misunderstand, C# and all other .Net languages are still alive and well, Mono is just totally replaced by CoreCLR now. It's newer, it's better and faster. It's just a runtime switch, your code would still work.

[@GaryAus]

@@therealpeter2267 Thank you for taking the time to explain 👍

[@ultimate9056]

​@@therealpeter2267OK still not touching C# with a 10 foot pole

[@blo0m1985]

Visual basic is a curse. You should give a try to c#, I like more than python (especially syntax added in a recent years)

[@nolram]

Good thing C# and .NET is open source and an open standard administered by the .NET Foundation!

[@pclinuxos_br]

Actually, it is a translator, for windows API calls to Linux API calls. Wine, that is.

[@daviderwin4705]

Everything old is new again

[@TheCsel]

mononucleosis

[@TheLongestConfidence]

Bro, it's "steward". With a _D_.

[@gamefromscratch]

You know what Stuart, I like you. You're not like the other people, here, in the trailer park.

[@TheLongestConfidence]

@@gamefromscratch Sir, this is a Wendy's.

[@ingframin]

Is there any hope to see monodevelop or sharp develop revived?

[@xgui4-studios]

No sadly , for linux, they exist omnisharp + dotnet cli, vscode + csharp extension or if you want to pay they is jetbraij rider

[@piotrlason1641]

.NET Core is cross platform, .NET isn't. For those saying yhat they dropped naming convention, ye thats true yet there is a lack of compatibility for many .NET libraries which are available only on Windows

[@rabdpnguin]

.net framework isn't cross platform. .net is. Blame Microsoft for the naming convention lol. It sucks. .net framework (latest 4.8) only ran on Windows. Mono was a cross platform version of the .net framework runtime. .net core (latest 3.0) was Microsoft's complete cross platform rewrite .net (5+) they dropped the "core" name but it's really just core going forward. They skipped version 4.

[@Magicmedo]

Why are not using linux?

[@ActionGamerAaron]

"WINE is a compatibility layer and it works kind of like an emulator, but isn't one" might be the short safe way of saying it :3

[@marksmithcollins]

LONG

[@iankaranja7765]

"Mono" drinking game if you dare 😂

[@undeadkitty334]

I thought you only got mono from kissing?

[@ThomasHill-jc4di]

never uses the F# code!

[@nTu4Ka]

Interesting

[@bes12000]

Yep im totally triggered, since I use Linux as main OS, lol

[@nolram]

What are you triggered about?

[@MartinRomero-i6b]

Does this mean I can no longer dev with C# on Linux? What does this mean?

[@WizardofWestmarch]

No .NET Core/5+ supports Linux and Mac etc. This is about the prior implementation someone else made and Microsoft bought that MS no longer feels the need to maintain because they have modern .NET

[@szigo3211]

Mono? Who?

[@GnuChanOS]

bruh wine is not emulator

[@marksmithcollins]

"SORT" IS NOT "SAME"

[@GnuChanOS]

@@marksmithcollins ?

[@upsurge5541]

For the first time im first gah dammn

[@Real_The_Goof]

I'm triggered.

[@nolram]

Why?

[@SomeNerd361]

Where does this leave MonoGame?

[@1000_Gibibit]

MonoGame already uses the cross platform .NET 8 since v3.8.2 so it's no longer dependent on Mono. It might not have been for a long time, I don't have the history on that.

[@nolram]

MonoGame and Mono are practically unrelated :)

[@mk2gamer]

I had to use monogame for a game engine class I had in college. If this is the same thing all I can say is good fucking riddance.

[@gamefromscratch]

Nope Monogame is a framework, written using mono (and. Net).

[@justlimeguy]

hey mike, can you test godot template projects on endlessOS so i don't have to, for about 8 gigs of ram? i am scared i will accidently wipe my data forvthis debian based linux os.

[@twenty-fifth420]

Mike rarely tests, so it is on you buddy.. If it is debian based, you should be fine. I am on arch (and despite the meme, it is a more cherry picked 'debian-base') and godot works fine on 16gb on ram.

[@Debianz]

So instead of learning how to properly install Linux, you want some random stranger that you don't know to do work for you? Yeah, you're definitely going to be a great game developer (not). If you don't want to put the work in yourself, go work at a fast food restaurant.

[@justlimeguy]

@@Debianz Yo what!! I am already making games and stuff on windows.The problem is it Takes away 5 gigs of ram just to run and i am left with 3 to work with. The computer i use is my brother's that he uses for his job so i don't want to break it for linux sake.

[@justlimeguy]

@@twenty-fifth420 i have 8 gigs

[@leezhieng]

It's first time i heard the name endlessOS. Looks interesting. I literally saw godot on one of their website's photo. Should be fine I guess, but bear in mind Godot version 4 requires higher graphics spec.

[@hopelessdecoy]

Microsoft killing a thing that enables people leaving Windows???? Shocking Giving it to the Wine team scares me. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Will they be suing Wine?

[@nolram]

What are you talking about??? Main .NET has been cross-platform for years. In fact the Windows-only version of it is the only thing that‘s dead. And no they can‘t and wouldn‘t sue Wine - for what would they sue them? The project and copyrights now belong them. I think it‘s time to drop the 2000s panic rhetoric and face the reality that Microsoft doesn‘t care about you using Windows. They want you to use their cloud services, and the people want Linux on those.

[@tom-hy1kn]

Small Indie game developers should be supporting Linux and gamers should be supporting Linux too. You can see what Windows has become. Why do people continue to put up with Windows when there is an alternative?

[@blo0m1985]

Because you can't run MS Word and MS Excel on linux?

[@ZedDevStuff]

Because the alternative sucks, like really. I know that my hardware for example wouldn't play nice with Linux, on top of that some of my favorite apps won't work at all even with emulation (Lively Wallpaper for example, or even WSA)

[@tom-hy1kn]

@@ZedDevStuff You want to know what sucks, Windows sucks. Go ahead stay on the plantation, it is your choice. Some people like the safety of being a slave, their master feeds them and gives them a place to sleep.

[@tom-hy1kn]

@@blo0m1985 There are programs that do the same thing on Linux. Yes you will have to take time to learn the program or you can keep taking the abuse from Windows, it is up to you.

[@Yan23459]

Because it’s not necessary, and most of stuff only works on windows

[@KeinNiemand]

It got replaced by .Net Core/.Net