Bonum Certa Men Certa

Debian is Not Including Mono by Default, Yet

Debian on a laptop



Summary: Refutation of common misconception that irreversible moves have already been made

A FEW DAYS ago we wrote about ongoing discussions in the Debian project -- mostly a controversy that arose when some new push was made to put Tomboy inside. According to the leader of Debian, this supposed inclusion of Mono by default is only under "under discussion". Contrary to some reports, this is not final and people can still enter this debate.

The Debian GNU/Linux distribution may include Mono in its default install, with the project leader Steve McIntyre telling iTWire today that "there's a chance that it might do, but it's under discussion at the moment."


The fight for Mono is often a principles-driven fight -- not one which revolves purely on legal and technical considerations. To give a new example, this new blog post shows that Mono is not even necessary. Better programs exist for GNOME (GTK), which do not rely on Mono.

There's again a whole slew of arguments going back and forth about mono.

Me, I don't use mono-based applications anymore. I used to be a Blam! user, until I found Liferea. I used to be an f-spot user, until I switched to digiKam. The reason, in both cases, was that the mono-based applications were much, much slower than their non-mono-based alternatives.


The person above is a Debian developer. It is his reasonable and moderate argument where he expresses no special interest in Mono. So why enter this uncertainty in the first place?

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