How does one go about installing a recent version of mono on a linux distro other than Novell's Suse?
http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page promises a "Linux" download, but they 'only' offer downloads for Suse and links to outdated versions of mono ( < version 2).
I have a compiler and am not afraid to use it ... but would feel much better if someone could point me to a "HowTo install Mono on Debian/Ubuntu" description or show me where to download a .deb of a recent version.
From http://www.mono-project.com/Other_Downloads:
Mono is available in the current stable Debian release and in later versions. To develop software with Mono, install the
mono-develpackage on Etch (4.0) usingaptitudeor similar package manager.
So just apt-get install mono-devel, perhaps?
UPDATE: The version of Mono that you'll get from Ubuntu 8.04 is 1.2.6, whereas you're probably looking for 2.0.1, which comes with 9.04. Probably your best bet is to upgrade to Jaunty. There's a possibility that downloading the Jaunty .deb and installing it on your machine will work, but I wouldn't bet on it.
UBUNTU 9.10 has installable packets for mono, including some integration tools that make assemblies (thingy.exe) usable from the CLI
Thanks to everyone who chipped in with answers and suggestions.
For ubuntu, many more up to date packages are available using the Personal Package Archives on launchpad.net.
If you are using ubuntu 8.04 (hardy) then the most relevant one would appear to be https://launchpad.net/~mono-edge/+archive/ppa
If you want the really bleeding edge mono, then there is a mono-testing PPA with mono 2.4 at https://launchpad.net/~mono-testing/+archive/ppa
To install packages from a PPA, and get updates for them, follow these instructions.
If you want to use the latest version of mono on an older (e.g. long term support version) of Ubuntu you can add the official backports repositories to /etc/apt/sources.list and simply install with apt-get.
It looks like mono was not yet backported to 8.04, looking at thepackages list http://packages.ubuntu.com/hardy-backports/allpackages
However, you can simply request a backport. There is a good chance that it will be added for you.
I myself have not managed to get the latest Mono installed from packages yet, but I do have a good tutorial for building the latest Mono from source on Ubuntu: Install Mono 2.4 From Source on Ubuntu
Fedora 11 is scheduled to be released 6/9/09 and will include Mono 2.4. Try
yum search mono
to see what packages are available after installation.
mono 2.4.2.3 is in debian sid (unstable dist) at the moment, and mono 2.4 is in debian squeeze (testing).
you could add lines to your sources.list for either testing or unstable distribution (or both), and set apt's priority rules to use only stable unless you explicitly ask for a package from testing or unstable (e.g. "apt-get -t unstable install mono-2.0-devel" - this will install mono-2.0-devel from unstable along with all versioned dependancies)
while it's possible - indeed, quite easy - to have a mostly-"stable" system with only a handful of packages from testing or unstable, IMO if you want to keep up with the bleeding-edge of software then you're better off just upgrading to debian unstable than sticking with stable, and getting into the habit of running 'apt-get dist-upgrade' semi-regularly. it'll be less hassle and there'll be less weird incompatibilities and other oddities (that's been my experience using debian for the last 15 years, anyway)
the same applies for ubuntu too, although with the 6-monthly ubuntu releases you don't need to wait as long to upgrade to the next supported release as you do in debian.
Did you check build.opensuse.org -- it contains Mono deb packages for Ubuntu builds as well as SUSE (and other distro packages too).