For enthusiasts of the .NET framework (like me) and supporters of the Linux operating system (also like me) today is a great day for cross-platform development.  Mono, the .NET implementation for the Linux platform was just released.  This release brings a far greater scope of compatibility and libraries to the developer toolbox and allows for compilation of Visual Basic 8 and C Sharp 3.0 code that will run natively on the Linux platform.

From mono-project.com:

"Mono 2.0 is a portable and open source implementation of the .NET framework for Unix, Windows, MacOS and other operating systems.

Microsoft Compatible APIs

• ADO.NET 2.0 API for accessing databases.

• ASP.NET 2.0 API for developing Web-based applications.

• Windows.Forms 2.0 API to create desktop applications.

• System.XML 2.0: An API to manipulate XML documents.

• System.Core: Provides support for the Language Integrated Query (LINQ).

• System.Xml.Linq: Provides a LINQ provider for XML.

• System.Drawing 2.0 API: A portable graphics rendering API.

Mono APIs

• Gtk# 2.12: A binding to the Gtk+ 2.12 and GNOME libraries for creating desktop applications on Linux, Windows and MacOS X.
• Mono.Cecil: A library to manipulate ECMA CLI files (the native format used for executables and libraries).
• Mono.Cairo: A binding to the Cairo Graphics library to produce 2D graphics and render them into a variety of forms (images, windows, postscript and PDF).
• Mono's SQLite support: a library to create and consume databases created with SQLite.
• Mono.Posix: a library to access Linux and Unix specific functionality from your managed application. With both a low-level interface as well as higher level interfaces."