A very quick note here. I have now done some testing of the existing Gtk# Runtime Installer for .NET (version 2.8.3) on a Windows Vista Ultimate installation. I proceeded to run one of my test applications - PeditGtk2, which makes use of GtkSourceView# -- and it ran well.
I have to put all my development work on hold until I get back from United States Air Force Tech School. The work will resume on the second week of June. I will be checking email, monologue and OSNews as often as possible during the evenings.
There has never been a better time to talk to your family members, co-workers and business associates about Linux, Mono and Open Source.
Well, I sent for a couple of copies of Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate edition (full version and an upgrade). Finally have a machine configured to begin some testing.
The first thing attempted was to create a fresh Windows 2000 Pro installation as to launch the Vista upgrade from within. It quickly told me that upgrading from this operating system was not supported and that one must boot from the Vista DVD to do a clean installation.
My second stab at it was more successful and was surprised by how relatively quickly it got installed considering the large amount of disk space it consumed.
Once running the Vista OS, I learned that my system had a 2.8 score (this is the lowest score of all the different metrics it uses do measure the total performance of the host computer). Even though the machine in question was equipped with an AGP nVidia 6800 sporting 512 MB it scored 2.8 on desktop graphics and that seems to be insufficient to run Aero.
The computer has an AMD Athlon 64 2800+ so I first chose to install the 64 bit version of Vista. The first application I tried to install was .NET Framework 1.1 redistributable, since it comes preloaded with the .NET Framework 2.0 redistributable. It gave me quite a bit of warnings and pointed me to some downloadable patches. I then installed my Cygwin vintage Mar 2004, which went through the setup routine without a hitch but ultimately did not work (bash.exe errors left and right).
I installed OpenOffice 2.1, FireFox 2.x, Thunderbird 1.5, and Gvim 7.x. All these applications worked well enough except that the Context menus (shell extensions) that permit me to send to edit in Vim any one selected file I right mouse click while on Windows Explorer were nowhere to be found.
I then thought about dumping the 64 bit version and also do a full installation of Windows XP SP2 follow by an upgrade to Vista 32 bit. I did that, but not before installing .NET Framework 1.1 and Cygwin while still in Win XP.
A few hours later, I had a Windows Vista running again but Cygwin was still broken.
I want to close this entry by expressing a very personal opinion: