Novell announced the release of MonoDevelop 1.0 which is an open source development tool designed for Mono that supports Microsoft Visual Studio, .NET (News - Alert) applications on Linux and Mac platforms.

Novell also announced the release of Mono 2.0 beta, which supports .NET 2.0. Novell, Inc. is a company which delivers infrastructure software for the Open Enterprise. It deals with desktop to data center operating systems based on Linux and the software required in securing and managing mixed IT environments. Novell (News - Alert) and Mono are registered trademarks of Novell.

Novell’s MonoDevelop allows application developers to quickly write desktop and ASP.NET Web applications on Linux and Mac Operating Systems. With MonoDevelop, developers can easily port .NET applications created with Visual Studio to Linux and Mac OS X and also maintain a single code base for all three platforms, which is of great benefit.

Novell’s MonoDevelop will also enable developers using Mono to migrate to .NET applications created with Visual Studio over to Linux and Mac operating systems very easily.

Novell which also released Mono 2.0 beta is the latest version of the open source, cross-platform .NET development framework implementation. It allows software developers to efficiently build .NET applications for Linux, Mac OS X, BSD, Solaris and Windows platform users. The Mono 2.0 beta also supports Microsoft (News - Alert) .NET 2.0.

Mono 2.0 beta also includes.NET 3.5’s preview in addition to a .NET 2.0’s profile. It is also featured with improved Mac support and a Mono migration analysis tool that helps customers in determining their Linux readiness for .NET migration.

“The Mono project is growing to become the leading choice for the development of Linux applications through the work of a community dedicated to helping people migrate their existing knowledge and applications to UNIX*,” said Miguel de Icaza, vice president of developer platforms for Novell and maintainer of the Mono project, in the press release, “MonoDevelop continues Mono's innovation to make it far easier to build and develop applications on Linux and other platforms, allowing developers to get software to market faster and more cost effectively.”

Jason Alexander, chief technology officer of Telligent Systems, said in the press release: “Using Novell's Mono framework for our new Graffiti CMS product, we're now able to reach a customer base that we couldn't access before. Our partnership empowers the small business owner and everyday individual to create and maintain social networks and blogs with ease. Mono also enables Graffiti to run entirely on other operating systems with little to no customizations to our source code, and we're very excited about that. The finished product is just incredibly impressive.”

MonoDevelop 1.0 and the Mono 2.0 beta will be available for download by mid-march 2008.

Jayashree Adkoli is a TMCnet Contributing Editor.