Real world cost to run WinForm apps on mono?

Question

My company has an existing established WinForm application which in running on WinXP. The application does alot of sound processing using DirectSound.

My company would like to evaluate Mono, as an alternative on a per workstation cost to Vista/Win Server 2008.

I've heard that different estimates, ranging from 'it will work easily on Mono' to 'it could take months of recoding in certain cases to get a WinForm app to run with Mono on Linux'.

Does anyone have a good real world experience with this? A good link reference? I would like to get a better idea before I commit to testing.

Thanks!

Answer 1

The WinForms part will be easy, you may have to do very little as Mono now claims to support Winforms 100%, however all the DirectSound calls will have to be rewritten to use an API available on Linux, ALSA being the obvious choice.

I have written small apps in VS 2005 and ported them with ease to Mono. If you do a lot of P/Invokes, then you'll have to take that into account, as those may have to be completely rewritten or rethought.

Also, check out MOMA: "The Mono Migration Analyzer (MoMA) tool helps you identify issues you may have when porting your .Net application to Mono. It helps pinpoint platform specific calls (P/Invoke) and areas that are not yet supported by the Mono project."