Mono Project Continues to Advance .NET Development on Linux

Latest releases of Mono and MonoDevelop offer greater scalability and
productivity for ISVs and corporate developers

SAN FRANCISCO, March 30 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- (Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco)
-- The Mono(R) project, an open source initiative sponsored by Novell, today
announced the availability of MonoDevelop 2.0, an open source integrated
development environment for programming with C# and other languages.
Developers can also take advantage of Mono 2.4, the latest release of the open
source, cross-platform .NET application framework which powers the recently
announced SUSE(R) Linux Enterprise Mono Extension. Mono and MonoDevelop
together streamline the development process and provide the tools that
Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and corporate developers need to build and
deploy .NET applications quickly and efficiently on the platform of their
choice.

"By making .NET application development and deployment accessible for Linux,
the Mono project is committed to expanding ISV and corporate developers'
options beyond the Windows platform," said Miguel de Icaza, vice president of
Development Platforms at Novell and leader of the Mono project. "With the
newest releases for Mono and MonoDevelop, we continue to improve and extend
the development tools and framework to deliver on this goal. The features and
functionality available in this release are allowing developers to increase
the number of .NET applications that are built and run on Linux."

ISVs build customer value with MonoDevelop and Mono 2.4

"As an enterprise product, it is critical that SplendidCRM runs on both
Windows and Linux," said Paul Rony, president of SplendidCRM Software. "With
the help of Mono, we are able to deliver our latest build on Linux in just a
few minutes. It doesn't get any easier than that."

Hristo Kosev, chief technology officer at Telerik, said, "Over the past few
months, we have been actively testing the compatibility of our RadControls for
ASP.NET AJAX offering with Mono. We are extremely happy that our joint work
with Novell will allow customers to build compelling high-performance ASP.NET
AJAX-based applications and run them on Linux using Mono 2.4."

MonoDevelop delivers new tools to build .NET applications on Linux

MonoDevelop 2.0 enables developers to write desktop and ASP.NET Web
applications on Linux, port .NET applications created with Microsoft* Visual
Studio to Linux* and Mac OS X*, and maintain a single code base for all three
platforms. MonoDevelop provides tools to simplify and streamline .NET
application development on Linux, including:

-- Improved ASP.NET and C# 3.0 support - The MonoDevelop code editor now
offers an improved developer experience with improved code navigation,
source outlining, and support for code completion in C# 3.0, ASP.NET,
XML and HTML. Additionally, the MonoDevelop ASP.NET editor provides
support for developing with master pages and custom web controls.
-- Built-in debugger - The MonoDevelop debugger supports both debugging
Mono-based applications as well as native applications, empowering
developers to quickly locate and resolve issues in their codebase from
directly within the development environment.

-- Interoperability and capability improvements - MonoDevelop now uses
MSBuild-style project files to increase interoperability with Visual
Studio. Web projects are now also compatible with Visual Studio 2008
and
Visual Web Developer 2008 SP1, providing more options for developers
who
want to build and deploy their web applications on both Windows* and
Linux.

Mono 2.4 streamlines .NET development on Linux

Mono 2.4 enables ISVs, independent developers, and corporate developers to run
.NET client and server applications on Linux across a range of hardware
architectures, including the mainframe. Additionally, with the recent
introduction of SUSE Linux Enterprise Mono Extension, customers and ISVs can
also receive full support, security and upgrades when using Mono in the
enterprise. New features available in Mono 2.4 include:

-- Performance improvements and runtime innovations - A new code
generation
engine greatly improves the performance of executing .NET applications
on the Mono runtime, while managed Single Instruction, Multiple Data
(SIMD) extensions enable developers to take advantage of hardware
acceleration without having to program in lower-level languages.
Additional runtime innovations, such as full ahead-of-time (AOT)
compilation, bring Mono-based applications to new platforms, including
the Apple* iPhone*.
-- Support for the latest features of ASP.NET - ASP.NET developers
targeting Linux can now leverage the latest ASP.NET features,
including
ASP.NET 3.5 extensions, new web controls, ASP.NET routing APIs, and
ASP.NET AJAX. Mono 2.4 can also host applications built using the
Microsoft ASP.NET Model View Controller (MVC) framework, released
earlier this month.

-- Hosting pre-compiled Websites - Mono now hosts ASP.NET Websites and
applications which have been pre-compiled on .NET. This reduces
startup
times, enables ISVs to distribute web applications without
distributing
source code, and greatly improves Mono's support of ASP.NET sites
built with Visual Basic.

MonoDevelop 2.0 and Mono 2.4 are available now and can be downloaded at
www.mono-project.com/downloads. For more information about the Mono project,
visit www.mono-project.com.

Web 2.0 Expo is March 31- April 3, 2009 in San Francisco. Novell will be on
the show floor at booth 311.

About the Mono Project

The Mono Project is an open source initiative sponsored by Novell to develop
an open source version of the Microsoft .NET development framework. Hosted at
www.mono-project.com, the Mono project provides all the necessary software to
develop and run .NET client and server applications on Linux, Solaris*, Mac*
OS X*, Windows and Unix. Mono has an active and enthusiastic contributing
community and is positioned to become the leading choice for development of
Linux applications.

About Novell

Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) delivers the best engineered, most interoperable
Linux platform and a portfolio of integrated IT management software that helps
customers around the world reduce cost, complexity and risk. With our
infrastructure software and ecosystem of partnerships, Novell harmoniously
integrates mixed IT environments, allowing people and technology to work as
one. For more information, visit www.novell.com.

Novell, Mono, and SUSE are registered trademarks of Novell, Inc. in the United
States and other countries. *All third party marks are the property of their
respective owners.

SOURCE Novell, Inc.

Kerry Adorno of Novell, Inc., +1-781-464-8042, kadorno@novell.com; or Erica
Burns of PAN Communications, +1-978-474-1900, novell@pancomm.com, for Novell,
Inc.