Life Without Mono: Removing Mono from Ubuntu

I removed Ubuntu from my system yesterday; I’ve already got problems with memory and decided I didn’t want it cluttering up my already sparse memory (1Gb!). One gigabyte isn’t enough? Don’t get me started…

Anyway, I removed it, and it was interesting to see what went with it:

• sysinfo
• tangerine
• tomboy
• f-spot
• beagle
• banshee
• gnome-do

These are good apps, but I don’t need another runtime environment cluttering up my sparse (sparse??) memory. There are a lot of other applications: the Mono folks have compiled a list, and the folks campaigning against Novell (and Mono) have a list also.

Most of these I never use (except F-Spot and Gnome Do) but I won’t miss them. Ubuntu has officially replaced F-Spot with Shotwell, and Gnome Do is not quite as good as the original Quicksilver (I’ve a Mac Mini with Quicksilver installed).

I’m already using some massive memory-abusing apps. For example, consider Google Chrome with a gazillion tabs, or NetBeans, or Gnome itself. I can’t replace NetBeans (unless I want to use the massive Eclipse instead…) but sometimes I use Midori instead of Google Chrome, or WindowMaker instead of Gnome (all very nice and highly recommended!). It also appears that the Google Chrome extension Too Many Tabs will free up memory when you “suspend” a tab; fantastic!

Try some of these lightweight items and see if you won’t have a snappier system!