Many .NET developers are familiar with the Microsoft .NET CLR installation. Just download the SDK (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=9B3A2CA6-3647-4070-9F41- A333C6B9181D&displaylang=en
The first thing required here is a Linux operating system distribution. Mandrake 9.2 is a good client-focused distribution of Linux. After visiting http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/ftp.php3 or any of the mirror servers, downloading the ISO files, and burning the CD-ROMs, just run the rather intuitive installation. You can see in Figure 11-2 the supported operating systems for the version of Mono used in this example.
So the steps here are just as simple for any of the other supported operating systems (yes, you can install Mono on Windows and even run it side-by-side with Microsoft's .NET CLR). Just install Mono and go. If your target operating system is not supported, then you will have to find a way to compile the Mono sources on that operating system. Always check first with the user group and lists to be sure someone else has not already ported it to your target platform. The steps for compiling Mono's sources are pretty typical for an Open Source project:
Download the source for the latest release
Open a terminal and run the next 4 steps from the shell
tar xf archive.tar
./configure
make
make install
After downloading Mono and XSP, setting them up (Figure 11-3) on Mandrake is as easy as double-clicking the installation RPM package.
Chapter 4's discussion on the GAC points out, Microsoft actually recommends private deployment unless you have a really good reason to use the GAC. Side-by-side execution is still achievable on Mono or Microsoft .NET with the correct directory structure naming, strong naming, and the use of the <codeBase> config file element. So Mono on Linux is not all that different if you keep these few things in mind. It really is just as easy to install and run on Linux even if you develop on and are more familiar with Windows!
Downloading and building XSP was very straightforward (much like the steps for building Mono on a non-supported OS). XSP automatically listens on port 8080, which was just fine with Mandrake 9.2. Npgsql and many other useful assemblies were already installed with the Mono 0.28 distribution.