18 ms·

Microsoft Launches Its .NET Distribution for Linux and Mac

915 points by Errorcod3 11y ago

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
nutate 11y ago
F# is a real breath of fresh air in comparison to something like Scala. It's direct ML heritage really shows, also just diving in with an IDE (like Xamarin, or I suppose Visual Studio) is super easy. I see it as the future of pop-functional programming. For example look at the way it handles type inference w/ JSON parsing. Compare that to what you have to do to parse JSON in Scala. It's subtle, but a major usability win.
- cannam 11y ago
  I did a toy comparison of ML-derived languages running on Linux the other day (http://thebreakfastpost.com/2015/04/22/four-mls-and-a-python/ http://thebreakfastpost.com/2015/04/22/four-mls-and-a-python...) and found F# already simple to get along with and fast to run, at this beginner level. It could become a really interesting option.
  - andor 11y ago
    Thanks, very interesting. Do you happen to know how large OCaml binaries get if you use Core.Std?
    - cannam 11y ago
      No, I haven't even downloaded Core. I am more ignorant about OCaml than any of the others. I'd love it if someone else here could weigh in on the pros and cons.
  - lobster_johnson 11y ago
    Good writeup. I posted it to HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9463254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9463254.
  - Zolomon 11y ago
    Maybe you could try out Haskell also? I would gladly assist if you'd be in need of any.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  You would think something like OCaml would fill in that niche with its wider availability.
  - cannam 11y ago
    They do seem like very similar languages. I imagine in most cases your choice would have effectively already been made for you by the context -- e.g. whether you wanted the option of fast native binaries (OCaml) or deep .NET integration (F#).
  - pron 11y ago
    There's a very cool implementation of (multi-threaded!) OCaml for the JVM: http://www.ocamljava.org/ http://www.ocamljava.org/
    - ionforce 11y ago
      I'm upset this wasn't called Joe Camel. And marketed towards children.
      - pron 11y ago
        Yeah, but that's because there already is a JoCaml: http://jocaml.inria.fr/ http://jocaml.inria.fr/
  - seanmcdirmid 11y ago
    OCaml doesn't come with the ecosystem that F# does. It isn't about availability, but APIs to play with.
    - s_kilk 11y ago
      I'm not sure I buy the ecosystem argument. We've recently seem other languages come from out of nowhere, with no ecosystem, to become major languages (Golang, for example). I don't think there's really anything stopping OCaml from being more widely adopted, except for lack of attention from trend-setters.
- narrator 11y ago
  Scala is getting really interesting lately though with projects like Spark and SparkSQL. Spark takes a Scala AST tree and computes a plan on it in order to distribute it to a cluster of possibly thousands of nodes and then uses transformations on that plan, similar to how an SQL query optimizer works, to make the plan more efficient. The cluster compute benchmarks on it are crazy good. The only problem I have with Scala is that it has so many features that it tends to have a steeper learning curve than most languages. However, this is mitigated somewhat in that it lets one switch between object and functional depending on what's more convenient or performant, thus making it easier for programmers who are not highly skilled in functional programming to pick up.
  - ericmo 11y ago
    Would there be a F# equivalent to that Scala/Spark thing?
    - reubenbond 11y ago
      I'm not in the know here, but maybe M-Brace is vaguely similar. Unsure about the optimization part. http://www.m-brace.net/ http://www.m-brace.net/
    - nutate 11y ago
      so I googled and saw this. one could say they're... looking into it... https://careers.microsoft.com/jobdetails.aspx?jid=170944&pp=VR https://careers.microsoft.com/jobdetails.aspx?jid=170944&pp=...
      - rattray 11y ago
        extract: > Inspired by Spark, we are building OneNet, a distributed functional programming platform based on F# that allows programmer to build distributed system at >3x productivity. OneNet offer similar programming model and extensibility of Spark, but goes much beyond in distributed functional programming to offer additional capability and performance (e.g., in-memory sharing of instantiated object with concurrent operation, use of both managed code & unmanaged code in functional programming, use of model and/or key value store, multi cluster with EDGE + cloud, private + public cloud compute, use of GPGPU/FPGA in cluster)
- dicroce 11y ago
  Did you just invent a term? "Pop-Functional"... I like it!
  - lultimouomo 11y ago
    Starts singing make my func the p-func / I want my func uncut...
    - TheSmoke 11y ago
      and i even hear marilyn manson doing a dirty version of it. "tainted func"
      - jacquesm 11y ago
        Marc Almond maybe.
  - nutate 11y ago
    I hope so.
- typish 11y ago
  Also interesting is their F* language: http://fstar-lang.org/ http://fstar-lang.org/ "F* is a new higher order, effectful programming language (like ML) designed with program verification in mind. Its type system is based on a core that resembles System Fω (hence the name), but is extended with dependent types, refined monadic effects, refinement types, and higher kinds. Together, these features allow expressing precise and compact specifications for programs, including functional correctness properties. The F* type-checker aims to prove that programs meet their specifications using an automated theorem prover (usually Z3) behind the scenes to discharge proof obligations. Programs written in F* can be translated to OCaml, F#, or JavaScript for execution. " It's open source too: https://github.com/FStarLang/FStar https://github.com/FStarLang/FStar
  - zaszrespawned 11y ago
    I'm going to write a package manager and call it F* ck
    - SideburnsOfDoom 11y ago
      There's already a mocking lib called Foq: http://trelford.com/blog/post/fstestlang.aspx http://trelford.com/blog/post/fstestlang.aspx
  - nutate 11y ago
    Gotta love automatic theorem proving. I read the Shen language book on "logic, proof and computation" which got me into the idea of a theorem prover inside of your normal language.
  - runT1ME 11y ago
    Have you worked with it? I love the idea of a fully powered F# without the kiddie gloves. F* looks pretty neat.
- ghuntley 11y ago
  If F# is of interest to you then check out http://www.fsharpworkshop.com/ http://www.fsharpworkshop.com/ + https://github.com/ghuntley/fsharp-workshop https://github.com/ghuntley/fsharp-workshop and finally http://fsharpforfunandprofit.com http://fsharpforfunandprofit.com
- justthistime_ 11y ago
  case class Fruit(name: String, variants: Set[String]) val fruitJson = Json.parse( """{ "name": "apple", "variants": ["cox", "braeburn"] }""") val fruit = fruitJson.as[Fruit] Doesn't seem to be too painful to me. I agree that F# is syntactically closer to ML (though Scala is closer to ML with its module system which F# gave up completely).
  - nutate 11y ago
    Tell me what happens with that technique when your json has > 22 keys. ;) (Edit) this is apparently working in the latest scala 2.11 But it killed my adoption of scala for real work early on. https://issues.scala-lang.org/browse/SI-7099 https://issues.scala-lang.org/browse/SI-7099
    - justthistime_ 11y ago
      It works without issues. I never have seen a use-case where this would have been an issue. Sure, it "looks" unfortunate, but there is only so much you can do when running on a completely uncooperative runtime. If devs need a typed representation of unlimited length, they provide a HList and move on. Such a representation will replace the length-limited tuples in a future version of Scala.
  - bunderbunder 11y ago
    In this base case, no, it isn't too painful. But once you get to larger and more complicated structures, F#'s type provider system can be a tangible timesaver. Especially if you're doing exploratory programming. TBH, I think the JSON example might underrate things a bit anyway. Where type providers really start to feel impressive is when you get to tricks like being able to noodle around inside undocumented (or poorly documented) COM interfaces with the help of CodeSense, or getting red squigglies in your editor (and compile time errors) when there's a problem with an SQL query. F# isn't all roses, of course. I really wish it had typeclasses, and discriminated unions are less powerful than Scala's case classes in some tangible ways. But from a purely pragmatic perspective, my (almost certainly biased) sense is that I can usually Get Things Done™ with less ceremony in F#, and type providers are a shining example of that pragmatism.
- ericmo 11y ago
  I know it doesn't say much, but having never coded in ML and having tried F# briefly (I code mostly C#, and it'd be easy to have mixed F#/C#), I think Scala has much clearer syntax, or perhaps it's just more familiar for someone who's coming from imperative languages like C++ or C#.
- d4rkph1b3r 11y ago
  I don't agree, it's 'direct ML heritage' is quite superficial, as it omits ML's most powerful feature, functor modules. Scala however has all kinds of super powered functional programming features that F# is missing, implicit parameters for type class constraints, ADTs, higher kinded types, etc.
- scaladdin 11y ago
  Learn Scala before you say something about it.
tdicola 11y ago
This is interesting but is there any commitment to support it long term? I remember when Silverlight was supposed to be the savior that brought .NET to Mac and Linux, but that didn't last more than 5 years. Would be nice for MS to say they guarantee support for 10, 15, etc. years.
- Someone1234 11y ago
  I'm playing devil's advocate: But Silverlight was too little too late. It arrived right as Flash was effectively dying. I don't blame them for killing it, it was dead on arrival. I can explain the entire problem with Silverlight using two dates: - iPhone initial release: 29th of June 2007 - Silverlight initial release: 5th of September 2007 Now, we can argue if iOS killed Flash, but I think between iOS's lack of support and all of the security issues associated with Flash, it was set up to lose popular support (and then HTML5/HTML5 DRM filled in the gap, even if it took years ultimately). Silverlight was a Flash competitor in a world that decided it didn't need Flash.
  - InclinedPlane 11y ago
    Silverlight was a half-assed, brain-dead attempt at trying to compete with Flash. It started out as a cool demo and then blew up into a role that didn't fit it well with insufficient support on the dev side. What it should have been was a competitor for AJAX/jQuery. What it turned into was just another video player browser plug-in.
    - s_kilk 11y ago
      Indeed, and yet we somehow ended up with a whole bunch of Line-of-Business desktop apps written in Silverlight. I did a brief stint at a windows-shop that made and maintained a variety of such apps.
- RCampbell 11y ago
  Silverlight is still supported by Microsoft - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle?c2=12905 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle?c2=12905
guard-of-terra 11y ago
They mercifully waited until Java caught up a bit with version 8. Seriously, they could have fair chance, C# was so much better, but today it's still quite better but java is proven and has more libs.
- coldtea 11y ago
  Java, with Oracle at the wheel, is not going anywhere. They've added closures in 8, big deal. C# is centuries ahead of Java 8, and with even more to come faster. And I'm saying that as an old Java dev (for 8 years up until 2008 or so) who have only dabbled in C#.
  - snarfy 11y ago
    Yep, the problem with Java is Oracle.
    - Gibbon1 11y ago
      I have to say, the two best things that happened to language design in the last fifteen years was. 1. Sun sued Microsoft for trying to improve Java. And so Gates went out and hired the guy that designed Turbo Pascal and Delphi to head up C# development. Because of course java and it's libraries are completely unsuitable for desktop development. 2. Oracle bought Sun and suddenly every company that absolutely cannot tolerate being Larry Ellison's b.. started investing in in-house programing languages. All those big companies have spent oodles of money on making sure Larry can't drink their milkshake. NAnyway as a sometime C#/.net code slopper I welcome Microsoft tossing their hat in ring. Seriously Linux and iOS seriously needs these tools.
      - p_l 11y ago
        IIRC, Sun sued Microsoft for creating & pushing proprietary extension that, when used, limited the created application to Windows platform and MS' JVM. Not for improving Java itself, afaik.
  - apalmer 11y ago
bigdubs 11y ago
how long until i can `brew install dotnet`?
- swalsh 11y ago
  I really want to run it on a Raspberry Pi
  - tracker1 11y ago
    mono is integrating the coreclr floss bits pragmatically... so you can probably use mono (if it's in the raspian repo).
    - ghuntley 11y ago
      Yep - https://trello.com/b/vRPTMfdz/net-framework-integration-into-mono https://trello.com/b/vRPTMfdz/net-framework-integration-into...
- igravious 11y ago
  Wow yes, apt-get install dotnet anyone? Should Microsoft provide a few common platform install methods?
  - smacktoward 11y ago
    It would be hilarious if it became easier to install .NET on Linux than it is to install Java.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - jmcqk6 11y ago
      Or easier to install .NET on linux that it is on Windows for that matter...
      - 11y ago
aroman 11y ago
Am I the only one bothered that they didn't include the space between the "OS" and the "X"? More importantly, this is huge, but as a Linux developer/user I still have no desire to use .NET on my platform. Maybe Mono has scarred my permanently.
- noir_lord 11y ago
  Also linux developer/user and I'd crawl over broken glass to have a reliable C# runtime on Linux, it's my absolute favorite language.
  - rdtsc 11y ago
    I have been using C# on Mono for a back-end and so far so good. For code I am editing on MonoDevelop or on VS and then compiled and ran on Linux.
  - ibebrett 11y ago
    Just out of curiosity why? I personally can't imagine why someone would choose it as a favorite. Not because I think it is bad, but because I feel its kind of a kitchen sink language that doesn't really have any clear advantages or features.
    - eropple 11y ago
      In short: because it doesn't make me think about it, freeing me up to think about the problem, and gets out of my way. You're right in that it's a kitchen-sink language, but IMO it's a well-curated one, and I don't find myself having to think about patterns or other crap as I do when using Java (which I've used professionally) or wrestling with poor tooling and spooky-action-at-a-distance language design in Scala (ditto--and I like Scala, but for a lot of things it just won't get out of my way). Reasonable people can disagree, of course.
  - sea6ear 11y ago
    I'm really looking forward to F# being really easily used cross-platform. I'm happy for C#, but I'll swoon for F#.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
amelius 11y ago
Does it include the source? And how liberal is the license?
- Errorcod3 11y ago
  The code that will allow the software to run on Linux and Mac OS has not yet been built. “It will be a few months before you can get your hand on this." -Somasegar
- scott00 11y ago
  https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr MIT license
  - sergiotapia 11y ago
    Checkmate Stallman.
    - jgrowl 11y ago
      Not really. I'm a big fan of MIT style licenses, but it also means that Microsoft could at anytime start making proprietary updates. It could mean we could start adopting it and then at some point down the road they could discontinue the open version and start making closed features/updates. Don't get me wrong, I'm very pleased that this is the direction Microsoft is taking. I am just still very skeptical.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      - chc 11y ago
        In fairness, as long as they have copyright assignment from contributors, they could just as well do that with a GPL software.
        jgrowl 11y ago
emilsedgh 11y ago
For a moment I thought Microsoft is releasing a Linux distro with .NET sdk pre-installed. It would've been great if the author knew what 'distribution' means in this context.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  It would've been great if the author knew what 'distribution' means in this context. "Distribution" is hardly specific to Linux distributions in technical circles. I don't know how you got that impression. The term is synonymous with software bundle, e.g. "Erlang/OTP distribution".
- farresito 11y ago
  Distribution in this context means a million things. The author used the right word.
u04f061 11y ago
Dear Microsoft, Please stay away from Linux. It is windows which converted me to Linux. Sincerely, A happy Linux User.
- kin 11y ago
  Windows and .NET are different things. I'm fairly confident being able to run .NET on unix machines won't affect you very much so you can stay a happy Linux User. Also, times are changing man, for the better. Embrace it.
  - u04f061 11y ago
    The only part which scares me is that people will start making Linux apps using dotnet technologies. >Also, times are changing man, for the better. Embrace it Yup. That is why MS had to realize that *nix is eclipsing it in cloud and to grab extra some extra pennies out of our pockets, they are releasing their products on these platform just to fool us that they care. Actually they don't care us at all.
    - buster 11y ago
      There are already some applications on Linux in Mono...
    - eloff 11y ago
      If you expect companies to care about you, you need a reality check.
    - cheald 11y ago
      Given that said .NET technologies are open source, why does this bother you?
    - darklajid 11y ago
      "Will start making apps using dotnet technologies" Like Tomboy [1] Or Banshee [2] Or F-Spot [3] Man.. That would suck. We're so happy that no one created Linux apps using .Net technology - like - 10 years ago. 1: https://git.gnome.org/browse/tomboy/commit/?id=9cc88c78834f1f073bfaf05069e808221f045e35 https://git.gnome.org/browse/tomboy/commit/?id=9cc88c78834f1... 2: https://git.gnome.org/browse/banshee/commit/?id=1547f9414005cc543fe9651f5ecb3e40815447ae https://git.gnome.org/browse/banshee/commit/?id=1547f9414005... 3: https://git.gnome.org/browse/f-spot/commit/?id=8cde63b4136f82b003b2280d4b7970442155a56f https://git.gnome.org/browse/f-spot/commit/?id=8cde63b4136f8...
jcoffland 11y ago
Never thought I'd say this but go Microsoft!
- digitalzombie 11y ago
  I dunno about that. They're still charging and threatening people for Android patents without really telling anybody what patents they hold over Android. I think they realize they can make money via open source now and they might do this for future product. Threaten people via patents or some kind of trojan horse. While it's great we have another programming language and platform option but their actions so far in the past and present isn't so great. They also tried to make a Hadoop clone that failed miserably so now they team up with Hortonworks. Perhaps that opening sourcing their VM they can have big data projects like Hadoop and such. Oracle have big sway over Java and JVM. Perhaps that's what Microsoft wants. People might forget about Oracle and JVM but I still remembered and it really sucks for Apache. In general, I'm not taking this bet and I'll wait on it. Also with my current skill set which is mainly open source, it is fine not dealing with Microsoft. Unless they have a better market share and momentum in some niche market like big data with Hadoop, spark or whatever I wouldn't even think about touching their open source stuff.
istvan__ 11y ago
Yes! Finally we can use .NET on on Linux a supported official way.
- return0 11y ago
  What are the major projects that are built in Mono? I only know opensimulator.
  - ghuntley 11y ago
    https://raygun.io/ https://raygun.io/
  - jebblue 11y ago
    http://www.mono-project.com/docs/about-mono/showcase/companies-using-mono/ http://www.mono-project.com/docs/about-mono/showcase/compani... As much as it pangs me to say it, I'm playing some great games on Linux now because the Unity people built it on Mono.
  - istvan__ 11y ago
    I don't know about any major project. I was waiting for MS to commit to running CLR on Linux (or any unix like clone) so that I can consider the CLR languages seriously (I am very interested in F# in particular).
therealwill 11y ago
C# just got a little sharper!
mmgutz 11y ago
Where are the actual download links to play with it?
davidgerard 11y ago
So is this open-source enough to get into Debian (free) and hence Ubuntu?
mozumder 11y ago
So, what exactly is .NET? As a non-corporate Mac user, I'd like to know.
- joshuapants 11y ago
  Think of it as like the Java runtime environment, but not terrible. You have two main pieces: the Common Language Runtime, which is the virtual machine (like the JVM) that executes the code. Then you have the library it comes with, which is fairly large compared to most languages. edit: Added more context
  - mozumder 11y ago
    How does it compare to Swift/Xcode/Mac Native?
    - untog 11y ago
      You've listed three very different things there. For Swift, compare it to C# (depends on personal preference) For XCode, compare it to Visual Studio (IMO, VS is light years ahead) For Mac Native, compare to the .NET runtime (IMO .NET is better but it's not as clear cut)
      - joshuapants 11y ago
        > For XCode, compare it to Visual Studio (IMO, VS is light years ahead) I agree. VS is the best IDE I've ever used by far. > For Mac Native, compare to the .NET runtime (IMO .NET is better but it's not as clear cut) The only thing I wish is that MS made it a bit easier to make .NET transparent for the user. Occasionally you need to install a version of the runtime when you install a new program, it'd be nice if that was all "built-in" and taken care of instead of adding another step to the installation.
        runfaster2000 11y ago
        Strangely enough, the reason that this install step exists is because the .NET Framework _is_ built-in to Windows. For example, .NET 3.5 was built-in to Windows 7. If your app needed .NET 4, then it needed to formally install it on the system. If we didn't make that an option, then .NET 4 apps would not run on Windows 7, which would be bad. .NET Core is _not_ built-in to the OS, so apps can carry it within their package, meaning that there is never a need to add another step to the installation. This is a major goal of .NET Core.
kichuku 11y ago
So does this mean that we might have Microsoft Lync client coming up for Linux? When I tried to use Lync on browser, I remember seeing something about .NET. Or is it silverlight?
- ossreality 11y ago
  God, its like you took a dozen unrelated words and shoved them in a blender and this is what came ou.
_sunshine_ 11y ago
Too little too late.
- pmontra 11y ago
  I don't think is too little but I'm sure they are late. Too late? Probably not but imagine if they did this 10 years ago, the impact it would have had on Java and many other ecosystems. I bet many of them would have been smaller and MS larger.
oldpond 11y ago
I can just hear the chuckling in the Linux and Mac communities now.
jakejake 11y ago
I'm curious, is there enough released yet to build server-side web apps? Would there be an apache mod, or some other web server? Or is there something more akin to a node app? I really enjoy C#, but everything that I did was either a Windows-only desktop app or a web app served through IIS. Thanks for any insight.
- snarfy 11y ago
  Yes, you can do this now. https://github.com/aspnet/Home/tree/dev/samples/latest/HelloMvc https://github.com/aspnet/Home/tree/dev/samples/latest/Hello... Follow instructions here: https://github.com/aspnet/home https://github.com/aspnet/home This can also be done with mono, fastcgi, and nginx. http://www.mono-project.com/docs/web/fastcgi/nginx/ http://www.mono-project.com/docs/web/fastcgi/nginx/
  - jakejake 11y ago
    Excellent, thank you!
- ilaksh 11y ago
  ASP.net web apps have been possible on Linux without IS for many years.
- ghuntley 11y ago
  There's enough released to build server-side apps. ASP.NET and .NET in general has been decoupled from IIS over the last year via project OWIN. Self-hosting binaries is in big time.
- ghuntley 11y ago
  http://nancyfx.org http://nancyfx.org - Sinatra for .NET (Nancy being the daughter of Frank Sinatra)
lambda 11y ago
So, what is actually new here? They had already announced the various parts of this, and the only link I see in here is a GitHub repo with links to other GitHub repos that we've already seen. Is there anything new in this announcement?
bjt 11y ago
My first question was "So how do I build "Hello World"? For anyone else wondering that, go to https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/blob/master/Documentation/linux-instructions.md https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/blob/master/Documentation/....
- ghuntley 11y ago
  1) ghuntley@freebsd-frankfurt:~/coreclr-master % ./build.sh 2) ghuntley@freebsd-frankfurt:~/coreclr-master % cp bin/Product/FreeBSD.x64.Debug/corerun ~/coreclr-demo/runtime 3) ghuntley@freebsd-frankfurt:~/coreclr-master % cp bin/Product/FreeBSD.x64.Debug/libcoreclr*.so ~/coreclr-demo/runtime 4) ghuntley@freebsd-frankfurt:~/coreclr-master % cd ~/coreclr-demo/runtime 5) ghuntley@freebsd-frankfurt:~/coreclr-demo/runtime % ./corerun HelloWorld.exe freebsd Hello, FreeBSD... , , /( )` \ \___ / | /- _ `-/ ' (/\/ \ \ /\ / / | ` \ O O ) / | `-^--'`< ' (_.) _ ) / `.___/` / `-----' / <----. __ / __ \ <----|====O)))==) \) /==== <----' `--' `.__,' \ | | \ / /\ ______( (_ / \______/ ,' ,-----' | `--{__________) Press ENTER to exit ... See also https://github.com/dotnet/corefxlab/commit/a39310b028ad830f80d5c78a17da3d77fbc131f4 https://github.com/dotnet/corefxlab/commit/a39310b028ad830f8... - "HelloWorld: Pimp up the FreeBSD daemon to have colors. Basically pay full respects to the original console screen-saver."
- tomjen3 11y ago
  For those of you who want to save the click: you need to build half the stuff on a windows machine and the copy it over - and you need mono to fetch the dependencies(!).
  - ghuntley 11y ago
    For now? Yes but not for long - https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/issues/1576 https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/issues/1576
  - jqm 11y ago
    Thanks for saving me the click.
ilaksh 11y ago
Mono has been a thing for so many years, this is kind of a joke to me. Maybe its just that my hatred for Microsoft runs so deep.
- dguaraglia 11y ago
  The difference is the Microsoft implementation is probably going to be much better quality and better documented. Also, you can't compare Microsoft of ten years ago with the Microsoft of today.
deafeningblow 11y ago
Oh hey the CLR finally achieved platform independence. Which is great because it is great.
- ghuntley 11y ago
  Yes. FreeBSD and OSX support was done 100% by the open-source community w/ support from MSFT whom helped a little bit with domain knowledge (the CLR product managers and developers can be found in the Gitter room) See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9431368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9431368 w/ Microsoft .NET CoreCLR is now running on FreeBSD 10.1 (amd64)
hokkos 11y ago
Check also https://github.com/dotnet/llilc https://github.com/dotnet/llilc compilation of MSIL byte code to LLVM supported platforms.
hokkos 11y ago
Funny thing I cloned their repo yesterday on Mac Os to check the advancement of their project, I could run the hello world and the static Web site but not the MVC one.
lottin 11y ago
I don't know who they're trying to fool. I don't run MS software in my computers and I never will.
- guardian5x 11y ago
  In case you use linux, i have bad news for you. there is by now many code lines from MS.
  - dTal 11y ago
    Strictly speaking the statement is probably still true if lottin doesn't use Hyper-V (and most people don't).
anonbanker 11y ago
In order to stay relevant, Microsoft attempts to supplant Xamarin's stakehold in the Linux/iPhone market, by directly eating their lunch. This is the same thing Microsoft did to IBM. Microsoft will do it to any "partner" they feel they can cannibalize. The Halloween Documents are not only relevant, but canon with this move.
- ghuntley 11y ago
  Well technically Xamarin are eating Microsoft's lunch right about now - https://trello.com/b/vRPTMfdz/net-framework-integration-into-mono https://trello.com/b/vRPTMfdz/net-framework-integration-into...
return0 11y ago
Does this mean we are going to see a .NET based desktop environment in Linux anytime soon?
- ghuntley 11y ago
  Immediately it means you'll see developers that use the Microsoft stack developing and deploying into docker containers running on Linux.
auvi 11y ago
I see a pattern here. People were excited about JVM, then came along CLR. And it is now getting attention as MS is porting it to Linux/OSX. Next cool thing will be BEAM (Erlang's VM) based languages, i.e. Elixir, Lisp Flavored Erlang etc. Reminds me of the hype cycle. So lets get hyped!
- ghuntley 11y ago
  OSX (and FreeBSD) was done by the OSS community not by MSFT.
Lorento 11y ago
There'll still be no Winforms or WPF on Linux, is that right? So no desktop apps will be portable?
diebir 11y ago
So, what can one develop using this beside "hello, world?" Can I build a cross platform GUI application? Is there a servlet container? How about an IDE?
gbraad 11y ago
Microsoft moved further into Java territory; "Write Once, Run Anywhere"... literally, with an editor and the runtime.
markbnj 11y ago
Was able to build it and run the HelloWorld.cs example. You need to build coreclr and corefx on windows for the managed components, since only the core cpp source can be built on linux at this time. You also need to install mono and grab nuget and use it to fetch a few packages. But all in all it feels fairly historic. http://i.imgur.com/XyCB3uA.png http://i.imgur.com/XyCB3uA.png
- runfaster2000 11y ago
  .NET Core team member here. I'm glad that you were able to make it all work with the instructions[1] we provided. There are two major pieces that we're still working on, which you call out: - Compiling managed source on OS X and Linux with Roslyn. - Running DNU (NuGet) on .NET Core to restore packages. Most everything else functionaly works. Once those are solved (and we are close to it), the experience will be great. In just a few commands, you'll be able to acquire .NET Core, restore packages and run your app, independent of which OS you are on. For .NET developers, it is indeed historic. Community and corporate developers alike are quite excited and see a lot of new opportunities going forward. You might have noticed that the community is leading the OS X and FreeBSD .NET ports, with support from Microsoft. We added official FreeBSD CI[2] only a week ago, upon the request of the community. [1] https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/blob/master/Documentation/README.md#get-net-core https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/blob/master/Documentation/... [2] https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr#build-status https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr#build-status edit: formatting
  - markbnj 11y ago
    Thanks for chiming in. Really looking forward to further developments. As a 15 year+ Windows development veteran whose been doing python on Ubuntu for 3 years it's great to be playing with .NET again. As far as the HelloWorld instructions go, they worked very well, so kudos on that. I think it's super important for developers to be able to jump in and check it out. I also should have mentioned that I used docker's ubuntu:14.04 image as a launch pad for this exercise, and it worked great as well.
    - 11y ago
PuercoPop 11y ago
How long until I can develop with Unity game engine from Linux?
- Intermernet 11y ago
  You can run Unity editor under Wine [1] and you can publish Unity games for Linux [2] but I assume native Unity editor support on Linux would require the use of a cross platform GUI library (Qt, GTK etc) as it probably relies on WinForms [3] which is only supported by mono (and I think OSX) up to .NET 2.0 [4]. [1]: http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php/Running_Unity_on_Linux_through_Wine http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php/Running_Unity_on_Linux_thr... [2]: http://blogs.unity3d.com/2012/11/22/linux-publishing-in-unity-4-0/ http://blogs.unity3d.com/2012/11/22/linux-publishing-in-unit... [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Forms http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Forms [4]: http://www.mono-project.com/docs/gui/winforms/ http://www.mono-project.com/docs/gui/winforms/
robmcm 11y ago
So how come they build VS:Code in HTML/JS/CSS using Chromium?
ahamino 11y ago
It's a bit too late?

915 points by Errorcod3 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

nutate 11y ago

F# is a real breath of fresh air in comparison to something like Scala. It's direct ML heritage really shows, also just diving in with an IDE (like Xamarin, or I suppose Visual Studio) is super easy. I see it as the future of pop-functional programming. For example look at the way it handles type inference w/ JSON parsing. Compare that to what you have to do to parse JSON in Scala. It's subtle, but a major usability win.

cannam 11y ago
I did a toy comparison of ML-derived languages running on Linux the other day (http://thebreakfastpost.com/2015/04/22/four-mls-and-a-python/ http://thebreakfastpost.com/2015/04/22/four-mls-and-a-python...) and found F# already simple to get along with and fast to run, at this beginner level. It could become a really interesting option.
- andor 11y ago
  Thanks, very interesting. Do you happen to know how large OCaml binaries get if you use Core.Std?
  - cannam 11y ago
    No, I haven't even downloaded Core. I am more ignorant about OCaml than any of the others. I'd love it if someone else here could weigh in on the pros and cons.
- lobster_johnson 11y ago
  Good writeup. I posted it to HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9463254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9463254.
- Zolomon 11y ago
  Maybe you could try out Haskell also? I would gladly assist if you'd be in need of any.
vezzy-fnord 11y ago
You would think something like OCaml would fill in that niche with its wider availability.
- cannam 11y ago
  They do seem like very similar languages. I imagine in most cases your choice would have effectively already been made for you by the context -- e.g. whether you wanted the option of fast native binaries (OCaml) or deep .NET integration (F#).
- pron 11y ago
  There's a very cool implementation of (multi-threaded!) OCaml for the JVM: http://www.ocamljava.org/ http://www.ocamljava.org/
  - ionforce 11y ago
    I'm upset this wasn't called Joe Camel. And marketed towards children.
    - pron 11y ago
      Yeah, but that's because there already is a JoCaml: http://jocaml.inria.fr/ http://jocaml.inria.fr/
- seanmcdirmid 11y ago
  OCaml doesn't come with the ecosystem that F# does. It isn't about availability, but APIs to play with.
  - s_kilk 11y ago
    I'm not sure I buy the ecosystem argument. We've recently seem other languages come from out of nowhere, with no ecosystem, to become major languages (Golang, for example). I don't think there's really anything stopping OCaml from being more widely adopted, except for lack of attention from trend-setters.
narrator 11y ago
Scala is getting really interesting lately though with projects like Spark and SparkSQL. Spark takes a Scala AST tree and computes a plan on it in order to distribute it to a cluster of possibly thousands of nodes and then uses transformations on that plan, similar to how an SQL query optimizer works, to make the plan more efficient. The cluster compute benchmarks on it are crazy good. The only problem I have with Scala is that it has so many features that it tends to have a steeper learning curve than most languages. However, this is mitigated somewhat in that it lets one switch between object and functional depending on what's more convenient or performant, thus making it easier for programmers who are not highly skilled in functional programming to pick up.
- ericmo 11y ago
  Would there be a F# equivalent to that Scala/Spark thing?
  - reubenbond 11y ago
    I'm not in the know here, but maybe M-Brace is vaguely similar. Unsure about the optimization part. http://www.m-brace.net/ http://www.m-brace.net/
  - nutate 11y ago
    so I googled and saw this. one could say they're... looking into it... https://careers.microsoft.com/jobdetails.aspx?jid=170944&pp=VR https://careers.microsoft.com/jobdetails.aspx?jid=170944&pp=...
    - rattray 11y ago
      extract: > Inspired by Spark, we are building OneNet, a distributed functional programming platform based on F# that allows programmer to build distributed system at >3x productivity. OneNet offer similar programming model and extensibility of Spark, but goes much beyond in distributed functional programming to offer additional capability and performance (e.g., in-memory sharing of instantiated object with concurrent operation, use of both managed code & unmanaged code in functional programming, use of model and/or key value store, multi cluster with EDGE + cloud, private + public cloud compute, use of GPGPU/FPGA in cluster)
dicroce 11y ago
Did you just invent a term? "Pop-Functional"... I like it!
- lultimouomo 11y ago
  Starts singing make my func the p-func / I want my func uncut...
  - TheSmoke 11y ago
    and i even hear marilyn manson doing a dirty version of it. "tainted func"
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      Marc Almond maybe.
- nutate 11y ago
  I hope so.
typish 11y ago
Also interesting is their F* language: http://fstar-lang.org/ http://fstar-lang.org/ "F* is a new higher order, effectful programming language (like ML) designed with program verification in mind. Its type system is based on a core that resembles System Fω (hence the name), but is extended with dependent types, refined monadic effects, refinement types, and higher kinds. Together, these features allow expressing precise and compact specifications for programs, including functional correctness properties. The F* type-checker aims to prove that programs meet their specifications using an automated theorem prover (usually Z3) behind the scenes to discharge proof obligations. Programs written in F* can be translated to OCaml, F#, or JavaScript for execution. " It's open source too: https://github.com/FStarLang/FStar https://github.com/FStarLang/FStar
- zaszrespawned 11y ago
  I'm going to write a package manager and call it F* ck
  - SideburnsOfDoom 11y ago
    There's already a mocking lib called Foq: http://trelford.com/blog/post/fstestlang.aspx http://trelford.com/blog/post/fstestlang.aspx
- nutate 11y ago
  Gotta love automatic theorem proving. I read the Shen language book on "logic, proof and computation" which got me into the idea of a theorem prover inside of your normal language.
- runT1ME 11y ago
  Have you worked with it? I love the idea of a fully powered F# without the kiddie gloves. F* looks pretty neat.
ghuntley 11y ago
If F# is of interest to you then check out http://www.fsharpworkshop.com/ http://www.fsharpworkshop.com/ + https://github.com/ghuntley/fsharp-workshop https://github.com/ghuntley/fsharp-workshop and finally http://fsharpforfunandprofit.com http://fsharpforfunandprofit.com
justthistime_ 11y ago
case class Fruit(name: String, variants: Set[String]) val fruitJson = Json.parse( """{ "name": "apple", "variants": ["cox", "braeburn"] }""") val fruit = fruitJson.as[Fruit] Doesn't seem to be too painful to me. I agree that F# is syntactically closer to ML (though Scala is closer to ML with its module system which F# gave up completely).
- nutate 11y ago
  Tell me what happens with that technique when your json has > 22 keys. ;) (Edit) this is apparently working in the latest scala 2.11 But it killed my adoption of scala for real work early on. https://issues.scala-lang.org/browse/SI-7099 https://issues.scala-lang.org/browse/SI-7099
  - justthistime_ 11y ago
    It works without issues. I never have seen a use-case where this would have been an issue. Sure, it "looks" unfortunate, but there is only so much you can do when running on a completely uncooperative runtime. If devs need a typed representation of unlimited length, they provide a HList and move on. Such a representation will replace the length-limited tuples in a future version of Scala.
- bunderbunder 11y ago
  In this base case, no, it isn't too painful. But once you get to larger and more complicated structures, F#'s type provider system can be a tangible timesaver. Especially if you're doing exploratory programming. TBH, I think the JSON example might underrate things a bit anyway. Where type providers really start to feel impressive is when you get to tricks like being able to noodle around inside undocumented (or poorly documented) COM interfaces with the help of CodeSense, or getting red squigglies in your editor (and compile time errors) when there's a problem with an SQL query. F# isn't all roses, of course. I really wish it had typeclasses, and discriminated unions are less powerful than Scala's case classes in some tangible ways. But from a purely pragmatic perspective, my (almost certainly biased) sense is that I can usually Get Things Done™ with less ceremony in F#, and type providers are a shining example of that pragmatism.
ericmo 11y ago
I know it doesn't say much, but having never coded in ML and having tried F# briefly (I code mostly C#, and it'd be easy to have mixed F#/C#), I think Scala has much clearer syntax, or perhaps it's just more familiar for someone who's coming from imperative languages like C++ or C#.
d4rkph1b3r 11y ago
I don't agree, it's 'direct ML heritage' is quite superficial, as it omits ML's most powerful feature, functor modules. Scala however has all kinds of super powered functional programming features that F# is missing, implicit parameters for type class constraints, ADTs, higher kinded types, etc.
scaladdin 11y ago
Learn Scala before you say something about it.

tdicola 11y ago

This is interesting but is there any commitment to support it long term? I remember when Silverlight was supposed to be the savior that brought .NET to Mac and Linux, but that didn't last more than 5 years. Would be nice for MS to say they guarantee support for 10, 15, etc. years.

Someone1234 11y ago
I'm playing devil's advocate: But Silverlight was too little too late. It arrived right as Flash was effectively dying. I don't blame them for killing it, it was dead on arrival. I can explain the entire problem with Silverlight using two dates: - iPhone initial release: 29th of June 2007 - Silverlight initial release: 5th of September 2007 Now, we can argue if iOS killed Flash, but I think between iOS's lack of support and all of the security issues associated with Flash, it was set up to lose popular support (and then HTML5/HTML5 DRM filled in the gap, even if it took years ultimately). Silverlight was a Flash competitor in a world that decided it didn't need Flash.
- InclinedPlane 11y ago
  Silverlight was a half-assed, brain-dead attempt at trying to compete with Flash. It started out as a cool demo and then blew up into a role that didn't fit it well with insufficient support on the dev side. What it should have been was a competitor for AJAX/jQuery. What it turned into was just another video player browser plug-in.
  - s_kilk 11y ago
    Indeed, and yet we somehow ended up with a whole bunch of Line-of-Business desktop apps written in Silverlight. I did a brief stint at a windows-shop that made and maintained a variety of such apps.
RCampbell 11y ago
Silverlight is still supported by Microsoft - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle?c2=12905 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle?c2=12905

guard-of-terra 11y ago

They mercifully waited until Java caught up a bit with version 8. Seriously, they could have fair chance, C# was so much better, but today it's still quite better but java is proven and has more libs.

coldtea 11y ago
Java, with Oracle at the wheel, is not going anywhere. They've added closures in 8, big deal. C# is centuries ahead of Java 8, and with even more to come faster. And I'm saying that as an old Java dev (for 8 years up until 2008 or so) who have only dabbled in C#.
- snarfy 11y ago
  Yep, the problem with Java is Oracle.
  - Gibbon1 11y ago
    I have to say, the two best things that happened to language design in the last fifteen years was. 1. Sun sued Microsoft for trying to improve Java. And so Gates went out and hired the guy that designed Turbo Pascal and Delphi to head up C# development. Because of course java and it's libraries are completely unsuitable for desktop development. 2. Oracle bought Sun and suddenly every company that absolutely cannot tolerate being Larry Ellison's b.. started investing in in-house programing languages. All those big companies have spent oodles of money on making sure Larry can't drink their milkshake. NAnyway as a sometime C#/.net code slopper I welcome Microsoft tossing their hat in ring. Seriously Linux and iOS seriously needs these tools.
    - p_l 11y ago
      IIRC, Sun sued Microsoft for creating & pushing proprietary extension that, when used, limited the created application to Windows platform and MS' JVM. Not for improving Java itself, afaik.
- apalmer 11y ago

bigdubs 11y ago

how long until i can `brew install dotnet`?

swalsh 11y ago
I really want to run it on a Raspberry Pi
- tracker1 11y ago
  mono is integrating the coreclr floss bits pragmatically... so you can probably use mono (if it's in the raspian repo).
  - ghuntley 11y ago
    Yep - https://trello.com/b/vRPTMfdz/net-framework-integration-into-mono https://trello.com/b/vRPTMfdz/net-framework-integration-into...
igravious 11y ago
Wow yes, apt-get install dotnet anyone? Should Microsoft provide a few common platform install methods?
- smacktoward 11y ago
  It would be hilarious if it became easier to install .NET on Linux than it is to install Java.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - jmcqk6 11y ago
    Or easier to install .NET on linux that it is on Windows for that matter...
    - 11y ago

aroman 11y ago

Am I the only one bothered that they didn't include the space between the "OS" and the "X"? More importantly, this is huge, but as a Linux developer/user I still have no desire to use .NET on my platform. Maybe Mono has scarred my permanently.

noir_lord 11y ago
Also linux developer/user and I'd crawl over broken glass to have a reliable C# runtime on Linux, it's my absolute favorite language.
- rdtsc 11y ago
  I have been using C# on Mono for a back-end and so far so good. For code I am editing on MonoDevelop or on VS and then compiled and ran on Linux.
- ibebrett 11y ago
  Just out of curiosity why? I personally can't imagine why someone would choose it as a favorite. Not because I think it is bad, but because I feel its kind of a kitchen sink language that doesn't really have any clear advantages or features.
  - eropple 11y ago
    In short: because it doesn't make me think about it, freeing me up to think about the problem, and gets out of my way. You're right in that it's a kitchen-sink language, but IMO it's a well-curated one, and I don't find myself having to think about patterns or other crap as I do when using Java (which I've used professionally) or wrestling with poor tooling and spooky-action-at-a-distance language design in Scala (ditto--and I like Scala, but for a lot of things it just won't get out of my way). Reasonable people can disagree, of course.
- sea6ear 11y ago
  I'm really looking forward to F# being really easily used cross-platform. I'm happy for C#, but I'll swoon for F#.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

amelius 11y ago

Does it include the source? And how liberal is the license?

Errorcod3 11y ago
The code that will allow the software to run on Linux and Mac OS has not yet been built. “It will be a few months before you can get your hand on this." -Somasegar
scott00 11y ago
https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr MIT license
- sergiotapia 11y ago
  Checkmate Stallman.
  - jgrowl 11y ago
    Not really. I'm a big fan of MIT style licenses, but it also means that Microsoft could at anytime start making proprietary updates. It could mean we could start adopting it and then at some point down the road they could discontinue the open version and start making closed features/updates. Don't get me wrong, I'm very pleased that this is the direction Microsoft is taking. I am just still very skeptical.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - chc 11y ago
      In fairness, as long as they have copyright assignment from contributors, they could just as well do that with a GPL software.
      - jgrowl 11y ago

emilsedgh 11y ago

For a moment I thought Microsoft is releasing a Linux distro with .NET sdk pre-installed. It would've been great if the author knew what 'distribution' means in this context.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago
It would've been great if the author knew what 'distribution' means in this context. "Distribution" is hardly specific to Linux distributions in technical circles. I don't know how you got that impression. The term is synonymous with software bundle, e.g. "Erlang/OTP distribution".
farresito 11y ago
Distribution in this context means a million things. The author used the right word.

u04f061 11y ago

Dear Microsoft, Please stay away from Linux. It is windows which converted me to Linux. Sincerely, A happy Linux User.

kin 11y ago
Windows and .NET are different things. I'm fairly confident being able to run .NET on unix machines won't affect you very much so you can stay a happy Linux User. Also, times are changing man, for the better. Embrace it.
- u04f061 11y ago
  The only part which scares me is that people will start making Linux apps using dotnet technologies. >Also, times are changing man, for the better. Embrace it Yup. That is why MS had to realize that *nix is eclipsing it in cloud and to grab extra some extra pennies out of our pockets, they are releasing their products on these platform just to fool us that they care. Actually they don't care us at all.
  - buster 11y ago
    There are already some applications on Linux in Mono...
  - eloff 11y ago
    If you expect companies to care about you, you need a reality check.
  - cheald 11y ago
    Given that said .NET technologies are open source, why does this bother you?
  - darklajid 11y ago
    "Will start making apps using dotnet technologies" Like Tomboy [1] Or Banshee [2] Or F-Spot [3] Man.. That would suck. We're so happy that no one created Linux apps using .Net technology - like - 10 years ago. 1: https://git.gnome.org/browse/tomboy/commit/?id=9cc88c78834f1f073bfaf05069e808221f045e35 https://git.gnome.org/browse/tomboy/commit/?id=9cc88c78834f1... 2: https://git.gnome.org/browse/banshee/commit/?id=1547f9414005cc543fe9651f5ecb3e40815447ae https://git.gnome.org/browse/banshee/commit/?id=1547f9414005... 3: https://git.gnome.org/browse/f-spot/commit/?id=8cde63b4136f82b003b2280d4b7970442155a56f https://git.gnome.org/browse/f-spot/commit/?id=8cde63b4136f8...

jcoffland 11y ago

Never thought I'd say this but go Microsoft!

digitalzombie 11y ago
I dunno about that. They're still charging and threatening people for Android patents without really telling anybody what patents they hold over Android. I think they realize they can make money via open source now and they might do this for future product. Threaten people via patents or some kind of trojan horse. While it's great we have another programming language and platform option but their actions so far in the past and present isn't so great. They also tried to make a Hadoop clone that failed miserably so now they team up with Hortonworks. Perhaps that opening sourcing their VM they can have big data projects like Hadoop and such. Oracle have big sway over Java and JVM. Perhaps that's what Microsoft wants. People might forget about Oracle and JVM but I still remembered and it really sucks for Apache. In general, I'm not taking this bet and I'll wait on it. Also with my current skill set which is mainly open source, it is fine not dealing with Microsoft. Unless they have a better market share and momentum in some niche market like big data with Hadoop, spark or whatever I wouldn't even think about touching their open source stuff.

istvan__ 11y ago

Yes! Finally we can use .NET on on Linux a supported official way.

return0 11y ago
What are the major projects that are built in Mono? I only know opensimulator.
- ghuntley 11y ago
  https://raygun.io/ https://raygun.io/
- jebblue 11y ago
  http://www.mono-project.com/docs/about-mono/showcase/companies-using-mono/ http://www.mono-project.com/docs/about-mono/showcase/compani... As much as it pangs me to say it, I'm playing some great games on Linux now because the Unity people built it on Mono.
- istvan__ 11y ago
  I don't know about any major project. I was waiting for MS to commit to running CLR on Linux (or any unix like clone) so that I can consider the CLR languages seriously (I am very interested in F# in particular).

therealwill 11y ago

C# just got a little sharper!

mmgutz 11y ago

Where are the actual download links to play with it?

davidgerard 11y ago

So is this open-source enough to get into Debian (free) and hence Ubuntu?

mozumder 11y ago

So, what exactly is .NET? As a non-corporate Mac user, I'd like to know.

joshuapants 11y ago
Think of it as like the Java runtime environment, but not terrible. You have two main pieces: the Common Language Runtime, which is the virtual machine (like the JVM) that executes the code. Then you have the library it comes with, which is fairly large compared to most languages. edit: Added more context
- mozumder 11y ago
  How does it compare to Swift/Xcode/Mac Native?
  - untog 11y ago
    You've listed three very different things there. For Swift, compare it to C# (depends on personal preference) For XCode, compare it to Visual Studio (IMO, VS is light years ahead) For Mac Native, compare to the .NET runtime (IMO .NET is better but it's not as clear cut)
    - joshuapants 11y ago
      > For XCode, compare it to Visual Studio (IMO, VS is light years ahead) I agree. VS is the best IDE I've ever used by far. > For Mac Native, compare to the .NET runtime (IMO .NET is better but it's not as clear cut) The only thing I wish is that MS made it a bit easier to make .NET transparent for the user. Occasionally you need to install a version of the runtime when you install a new program, it'd be nice if that was all "built-in" and taken care of instead of adding another step to the installation.
      - runfaster2000 11y ago
        Strangely enough, the reason that this install step exists is because the .NET Framework _is_ built-in to Windows. For example, .NET 3.5 was built-in to Windows 7. If your app needed .NET 4, then it needed to formally install it on the system. If we didn't make that an option, then .NET 4 apps would not run on Windows 7, which would be bad. .NET Core is _not_ built-in to the OS, so apps can carry it within their package, meaning that there is never a need to add another step to the installation. This is a major goal of .NET Core.

kichuku 11y ago

So does this mean that we might have Microsoft Lync client coming up for Linux? When I tried to use Lync on browser, I remember seeing something about .NET. Or is it silverlight?

ossreality 11y ago
God, its like you took a dozen unrelated words and shoved them in a blender and this is what came ou.

_sunshine_ 11y ago

Too little too late.

pmontra 11y ago
I don't think is too little but I'm sure they are late. Too late? Probably not but imagine if they did this 10 years ago, the impact it would have had on Java and many other ecosystems. I bet many of them would have been smaller and MS larger.

oldpond 11y ago

I can just hear the chuckling in the Linux and Mac communities now.

jakejake 11y ago

I'm curious, is there enough released yet to build server-side web apps? Would there be an apache mod, or some other web server? Or is there something more akin to a node app? I really enjoy C#, but everything that I did was either a Windows-only desktop app or a web app served through IIS. Thanks for any insight.

snarfy 11y ago
Yes, you can do this now. https://github.com/aspnet/Home/tree/dev/samples/latest/HelloMvc https://github.com/aspnet/Home/tree/dev/samples/latest/Hello... Follow instructions here: https://github.com/aspnet/home https://github.com/aspnet/home This can also be done with mono, fastcgi, and nginx. http://www.mono-project.com/docs/web/fastcgi/nginx/ http://www.mono-project.com/docs/web/fastcgi/nginx/
- jakejake 11y ago
  Excellent, thank you!
ilaksh 11y ago
ASP.net web apps have been possible on Linux without IS for many years.
ghuntley 11y ago
There's enough released to build server-side apps. ASP.NET and .NET in general has been decoupled from IIS over the last year via project OWIN. Self-hosting binaries is in big time.
ghuntley 11y ago
http://nancyfx.org http://nancyfx.org - Sinatra for .NET (Nancy being the daughter of Frank Sinatra)

lambda 11y ago

So, what is actually new here? They had already announced the various parts of this, and the only link I see in here is a GitHub repo with links to other GitHub repos that we've already seen. Is there anything new in this announcement?

bjt 11y ago

My first question was "So how do I build "Hello World"? For anyone else wondering that, go to https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/blob/master/Documentation/linux-instructions.md https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/blob/master/Documentation/....

ghuntley 11y ago
1) ghuntley@freebsd-frankfurt:~/coreclr-master % ./build.sh 2) ghuntley@freebsd-frankfurt:~/coreclr-master % cp bin/Product/FreeBSD.x64.Debug/corerun ~/coreclr-demo/runtime 3) ghuntley@freebsd-frankfurt:~/coreclr-master % cp bin/Product/FreeBSD.x64.Debug/libcoreclr*.so ~/coreclr-demo/runtime 4) ghuntley@freebsd-frankfurt:~/coreclr-master % cd ~/coreclr-demo/runtime 5) ghuntley@freebsd-frankfurt:~/coreclr-demo/runtime % ./corerun HelloWorld.exe freebsd Hello, FreeBSD... , , /( )` \ \___ / | /- _ `-/ ' (/\/ \ \ /\ / / | ` \ O O ) / | `-^--'`< ' (_.) _ ) / `.___/` / `-----' / <----. __ / __ \ <----|====O)))==) \) /==== <----' `--' `.__,' \ | | \ / /\ ______( (_ / \______/ ,' ,-----' | `--{__________) Press ENTER to exit ... See also https://github.com/dotnet/corefxlab/commit/a39310b028ad830f80d5c78a17da3d77fbc131f4 https://github.com/dotnet/corefxlab/commit/a39310b028ad830f8... - "HelloWorld: Pimp up the FreeBSD daemon to have colors. Basically pay full respects to the original console screen-saver."
tomjen3 11y ago
For those of you who want to save the click: you need to build half the stuff on a windows machine and the copy it over - and you need mono to fetch the dependencies(!).
- ghuntley 11y ago
  For now? Yes but not for long - https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/issues/1576 https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/issues/1576
- jqm 11y ago
  Thanks for saving me the click.

ilaksh 11y ago

Mono has been a thing for so many years, this is kind of a joke to me. Maybe its just that my hatred for Microsoft runs so deep.

dguaraglia 11y ago
The difference is the Microsoft implementation is probably going to be much better quality and better documented. Also, you can't compare Microsoft of ten years ago with the Microsoft of today.

deafeningblow 11y ago

Oh hey the CLR finally achieved platform independence. Which is great because it is great.

ghuntley 11y ago
Yes. FreeBSD and OSX support was done 100% by the open-source community w/ support from MSFT whom helped a little bit with domain knowledge (the CLR product managers and developers can be found in the Gitter room) See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9431368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9431368 w/ Microsoft .NET CoreCLR is now running on FreeBSD 10.1 (amd64)

hokkos 11y ago

Check also https://github.com/dotnet/llilc https://github.com/dotnet/llilc compilation of MSIL byte code to LLVM supported platforms.

hokkos 11y ago

Funny thing I cloned their repo yesterday on Mac Os to check the advancement of their project, I could run the hello world and the static Web site but not the MVC one.

lottin 11y ago

I don't know who they're trying to fool. I don't run MS software in my computers and I never will.

guardian5x 11y ago
In case you use linux, i have bad news for you. there is by now many code lines from MS.
- dTal 11y ago
  Strictly speaking the statement is probably still true if lottin doesn't use Hyper-V (and most people don't).

anonbanker 11y ago

In order to stay relevant, Microsoft attempts to supplant Xamarin's stakehold in the Linux/iPhone market, by directly eating their lunch. This is the same thing Microsoft did to IBM. Microsoft will do it to any "partner" they feel they can cannibalize. The Halloween Documents are not only relevant, but canon with this move.

ghuntley 11y ago
Well technically Xamarin are eating Microsoft's lunch right about now - https://trello.com/b/vRPTMfdz/net-framework-integration-into-mono https://trello.com/b/vRPTMfdz/net-framework-integration-into...

return0 11y ago

Does this mean we are going to see a .NET based desktop environment in Linux anytime soon?

ghuntley 11y ago
Immediately it means you'll see developers that use the Microsoft stack developing and deploying into docker containers running on Linux.

auvi 11y ago

I see a pattern here. People were excited about JVM, then came along CLR. And it is now getting attention as MS is porting it to Linux/OSX. Next cool thing will be BEAM (Erlang's VM) based languages, i.e. Elixir, Lisp Flavored Erlang etc. Reminds me of the hype cycle. So lets get hyped!

ghuntley 11y ago
OSX (and FreeBSD) was done by the OSS community not by MSFT.

Lorento 11y ago

There'll still be no Winforms or WPF on Linux, is that right? So no desktop apps will be portable?

diebir 11y ago

So, what can one develop using this beside "hello, world?" Can I build a cross platform GUI application? Is there a servlet container? How about an IDE?

gbraad 11y ago

Microsoft moved further into Java territory; "Write Once, Run Anywhere"... literally, with an editor and the runtime.

markbnj 11y ago

Was able to build it and run the HelloWorld.cs example. You need to build coreclr and corefx on windows for the managed components, since only the core cpp source can be built on linux at this time. You also need to install mono and grab nuget and use it to fetch a few packages. But all in all it feels fairly historic. http://i.imgur.com/XyCB3uA.png http://i.imgur.com/XyCB3uA.png

runfaster2000 11y ago
.NET Core team member here. I'm glad that you were able to make it all work with the instructions[1] we provided. There are two major pieces that we're still working on, which you call out: - Compiling managed source on OS X and Linux with Roslyn. - Running DNU (NuGet) on .NET Core to restore packages. Most everything else functionaly works. Once those are solved (and we are close to it), the experience will be great. In just a few commands, you'll be able to acquire .NET Core, restore packages and run your app, independent of which OS you are on. For .NET developers, it is indeed historic. Community and corporate developers alike are quite excited and see a lot of new opportunities going forward. You might have noticed that the community is leading the OS X and FreeBSD .NET ports, with support from Microsoft. We added official FreeBSD CI[2] only a week ago, upon the request of the community. [1] https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/blob/master/Documentation/README.md#get-net-core https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/blob/master/Documentation/... [2] https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr#build-status https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr#build-status edit: formatting
- markbnj 11y ago
  Thanks for chiming in. Really looking forward to further developments. As a 15 year+ Windows development veteran whose been doing python on Ubuntu for 3 years it's great to be playing with .NET again. As far as the HelloWorld instructions go, they worked very well, so kudos on that. I think it's super important for developers to be able to jump in and check it out. I also should have mentioned that I used docker's ubuntu:14.04 image as a launch pad for this exercise, and it worked great as well.
  - 11y ago

PuercoPop 11y ago

How long until I can develop with Unity game engine from Linux?

Intermernet 11y ago
You can run Unity editor under Wine [1] and you can publish Unity games for Linux [2] but I assume native Unity editor support on Linux would require the use of a cross platform GUI library (Qt, GTK etc) as it probably relies on WinForms [3] which is only supported by mono (and I think OSX) up to .NET 2.0 [4]. [1]: http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php/Running_Unity_on_Linux_through_Wine http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php/Running_Unity_on_Linux_thr... [2]: http://blogs.unity3d.com/2012/11/22/linux-publishing-in-unity-4-0/ http://blogs.unity3d.com/2012/11/22/linux-publishing-in-unit... [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Forms http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Forms [4]: http://www.mono-project.com/docs/gui/winforms/ http://www.mono-project.com/docs/gui/winforms/

robmcm 11y ago

So how come they build VS:Code in HTML/JS/CSS using Chromium?

ahamino 11y ago

It's a bit too late?