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at college we use Microsoft .NET for developing applications. I recently switched to Ubuntu and would like to know similar tools for making apps on/for ubuntu.

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I would like to strongly urge you to consider learning another language like Python or C / C++. A large number (in fact, probably the majority) of applications in the repository are written in those languages. – Nathan Osman Jul 31 '10 at 5:50
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Although it'll be pretty easy to pick up another language it's certainly not necessary or particularly desirable (other than exposure to other programming styles). – RAOF Aug 2 '10 at 0:49

7 Answers

up vote 25 down vote accepted

You can program in .NET on ubuntu too. Well, sort of. There is an open source implementation of the .NET platform available called MONO. MONO apps can run on Ubuntu/Linux, Windows and Mac OS. Look for MonoDevelop in Ubuntu Software Center. Learn more about Mono in Ubuntu.

Another option is Quickly. In my opinion Quickly is better for Ubuntu centric app development. You can code you app and release it to a PPA (launchpad-repository) in minutes. Quickly is also available from Ubuntu Software Center. Get started writing apps with Quickly.

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+1 for answering the question. (Personally I hate mono, but oh well.) – Nathan Osman Jul 31 '10 at 5:48
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your mono-project.com link points to the Quickly URL – McDowell Jul 31 '10 at 12:31
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You can use the CLI (.NET) languages and standard libraries just fine - the versions of mono in recent Ubuntu releases support C# 3.0 and (most of) .NET 3.5. You'll want to learn the GTK# UI library, though. System.Winforms & WPF applications will not look native, and WPF is also not fully implemented. – RAOF Aug 2 '10 at 0:52
You'll want to pick up the MonoDevelop IDE. Aside from GUI development (*nix uses GTK# for drag-drop vs Winforms/WPF on windows) development in Ubuntu isn't a whole lot different than development in windows. – Evan Plaice Sep 16 '10 at 23:50
up vote 13 down vote

Quickly can help you make cool apps using Python (pretty easy to learn and very popular) quickly!

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+1 for suggesting Python/Quickly. I am a professional Python programmer, and I use Ubuntu on my computer. Ubuntu (and Linux in general) is great for doing Python development. – codeape Aug 4 '10 at 20:37
up vote 7 down vote

The Vala language is a programming language very similar to c#. It is still very young but already has a lot of bindings to existing librarys (for example GTK). It compiles to native binarys, so your users don't need an additional runtime like dotnet.

Here is an intorduction for C# programmers.

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it you are targeting ubuntu then mono is preinstalled installed and so requires no additional runtime. – trampster Sep 6 '10 at 0:54
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It looks like that link to Vala for C# doesn't work. Try this one instead, live.gnome.org/Vala/ValaForCSharpProgrammers. There's also one for Java programmers, live.gnome.org/Vala/ValaForJavaProgrammers. – Mark B Sep 27 '10 at 20:25
thanks Mark, seems like they have restructured their wiki, I corrected the link in the Answer. – thbusch Jan 6 '11 at 15:23
up vote 4 down vote

I see no reason for all these suggestions that you switch application platforms/languages. Use what you're used to and you'll be more productive than having to spend time learning another language.

Monodevelop will give you a better experience of Mono development - its no Visual Studio, but its the best integrated IDE for mono you're gonna get on Ubuntu. Visual design of GTK forms and their controls is a big win (think Winforms but Linux style).

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up vote 2 down vote

There are all sorts of tools available on Linux which allow you to create rich desktop applications. Bowline is an mvc framework which allows you to create desktop applications in ruby. Shoes is another framework which allows you to create desktop apps in ruby, and it is by far the easiest desktop app framework.

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up vote 1 down vote

Start learning QT. It's a framework based on C++. It's cross platform and also works fine in windows. Even it has an add in for Visual Studio. It's usually used for KDE platform. For GNOME, you can learn GTK#.

From Wikipedia,

In place of the Qt toolkit, GTK+ was chosen as the base of the GNOME desktop.

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Qt works on GNOME – dv3500ea Apr 17 '11 at 11:07
@dv3500ea: You didn't get it. QT is used to develop KDE applications, that doesn't mean that applications built by QT won't run on GNOME. The same way GTK applications will run on KDE. But you can't use GTK to build KDE applications – crucified soul Apr 17 '11 at 11:11
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It's not 'only for KDE platform' though. – dv3500ea Apr 17 '11 at 12:30
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QT is not used to build KDE apps. QT is used to build GUIs. KDE uses QT to build it's apps. QT can be used to build GTK apps too. – Owais Lone Apr 17 '11 at 13:11
I think i am totally lost here. Marked as community wiki. Thanks for your support and patience. – crucified soul Apr 17 '11 at 16:59
up vote 0 down vote

I'm not sure how suggesting other languages/frameworks without answering the question is kosher here. If you wish to use C# or VB on Linux, Mono is the only way to go.

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