C# Cross-Platform Tricks: Run ASP.NET Applications On Linux

Welcome to the Installing The Mono Framework section. I will give a quick introduction on how the section is organized before we get started.

A Linux distribution is a combination of a package manager, a software collection, and a graphical desktop environment. There are many Linux distributions out there and picking the right one can be a difficult task.

In this lecture I will show you the most popular Linux distributions, and I will select the most appropriate one to use for the remainder of this course.

A virtual machine is a software application that simulates a hardware environment. You can install a complete operating systems into a virtual machine, and this allows you to run one operating system on top of another.

In this lecture I will show you the most popular virtual machine applications for Windows, OS/X and Linux, and I will select the most appropriate one to use for the remainder of this course.

In this lecture I will create a new Virtualbox virtual machine, and configure it for the upcoming Linux installation in the next lecture. I'll show you how you can configure the virtual machine for optimal performance.

I will perform a complete installation of the Ubuntu Server Linux distribution into the virtual machine that I set up in the previous lecture.

After completing the Ubuntu Server installation from the previous lecture, I am left with a very basic command line interface. This might surprise you, because I announced earlier that Ubuntu has a graphical user interface.

In this lecture I will explain the Linux architecture to you, and tell you exactly why the Linux installation did not produce a graphical desktop environment.

In this lecture I will guide you through a complete installation of the Mono Framework.

We finally have a complete installation of Ubuntu Linux and the Mono Framework, so now it's time to test if the installation has completed successfully.

I will write, build and run a very simple Hello World application, to test if the C# compiler and the Mono Runtime Environment is working correctly.

Congratulations on finishing this section. This is a recap of what we have learned.

Welcome to the Mono On Linux vs .NET On Windows section. I will give a quick introduction on how the section is organized before we get started.

The Mono Framework is on par with .NET version 4.5, and provides 99% compatibility with the Microsoft Framework. So what's in the missing 1%?

In this lecture I will show you which modules, subsystems and libraries in Microsoft .NET are completely missing or only partially implemented in the Mono Framework.

A big difference between the Windows and Linux filesystems is that Linux uses a forward slash as a folder separator, while Windows uses the backslash character.

In this lecture I will show you the consequences this has for your code, and how you can write cross-platform code that will work perfectly on both Windows and Linux.

Another big difference between the Windows and Linux filesystems is that the Linux filesystem is case sensitive, while the Windows filesystem is case insensitive.

In this lecture I will show you the consequences this has for your code, and how you can write cross-platform code that will work perfectly on both Windows and Linux.

The directory structure of Linux is totally different from Windows. There is no Windows, System32 or Program Files folder. So how do you access special folders?

I'll show you how you can avoid hardcoding absolute folders and write truly cross-platform code by dynamically generating special folder paths in your code.

Congratulations on finishing this section. This is a recap of what we have learned.

Welcome to the Installing MonoDevelop On Linux section. I will give a quick introduction on how the section is organized before we get started.

In this lecture I am going to install the graphical Unity desktop.

In this lecture I am going to install the Virtualbox extensions. These are special Ubuntu kernel modules that boost graphics performance and improve the interoperability between Ubuntu and my OS/X host.

The Unity desktop is very user friendly, but it can be a bit confusing if you have never seen it before. In this lecture I'll give you a quick walkthrough of the desktop and demonstrate some of the standard Linux applications.

To really get productive on Linux you're going to need a professional integrated development environment on par with Visual Studio. MonoDevelop is not Visual Studio, but it comes pretty close. It offers intellisense, code completion, smart refactoring, integrated debugging, and supports C#, VB.NET and F# out of the box.

In this lecture I will perform a complete installation of MonoDevelop.

To verify the MonoDevelop installation in the previous lecture I will revisit the Hello World application. I will write the application again, but this time I'll do everything from inside MonoDevelop.

Congratulations on finishing this section. This is a recap of what we have learned.

When I installed the Mono Framework I used a package called 'mono-complete', but strangely enough this did not include the Mono webserver. So in this lecture I will manually install the XSP4 webserver so that I can finally start running ASP.NET applications on Linux.

The first application I am going to install and run on Linux is the REST File Service example from the ServiceStack website. This application implements a simple REST interface for viewing and editing files and folders on a server.

I will show you exactly what's required to get this application running on Linux.

The Razor Rockstars demo is a very popular ServiceStack example that uses a combination of Razor MVC viewpages and static Markdown files to implement a catalog of rockstar profiles.

I will show you how to get this project running on Linux.

My third ASP.NET application is an email contact manager that uses a SQLLite database to maintain a list of email addresses and keep track of emails sent to these addresses. The application can send emails directly or defer delivery to an asynchronous RabbitMQ server.

I will show you what you need to do to get this application running on Linux.

Northwind is a famous Microsoft Access database that contains the company data of a fictional organisation. In this lecture I am going to use a SQLLite copy of the Northwind data, and I'll show you an ASP.NET application that can view, filter, and sort this data in interesting ways.

I will show you exactly what you need to do to get this application running on Linux.

Congratulations on finishing this section. This is a recap of what we have learned.

In this lecture I would like to thank you for finishing the course and offer some final words.