ASP.NET Isn’t Just For Windows Anymore

Lee Zoumas - February 6, 2009

Traditionally, web developers were forced to run their ASP.NET applications under the Microsoft Windows platform. As a result, many open source web developers were not able to utilize Microsoft’s powerful ASP.NET framework on various platforms, such as Linux or the Mac OS. A few years ago, Novell started an open source project called Mono, which brings the ASP.NET Framework to virtually any platform.

What this means for companies planning to build a website is that they are no longer bound by license limitations from Microsoft if they choose to utilize the ASP.NET framework. The fact that ASP.NET was required to run on a costly Windows server swayed many web developers and companies alike into choosing an open source solution, such as the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP). Now with the release of Mono, developers can run ASP.NET on what is called a LAMA stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL and ASP.NET), which would have been unheard of a few years ago.

Although the Windows platform is still the fastest and easiest way to run the ASP.NET framework, the release of Mono is particularly interesting because it gives both web developers and companies, who would have otherwise dismissed ASP.NET altogether, the option to incorporate the powerful framework into their existing server configurations.

You can learn more about the Mono Project by visiting http://www.mono-project.com.