Banshee is going to be the default music player for Ubuntu which makes me worry. Banshee is based on the controversial Mono technologies developed by Novell employees. Richard M Stallman has warned against Mono and C# which applies to Banshee as well.

Here, let’s take a look at one of the main things that get’s me going about mono-supporters. There is a strong push to get Banshee in as the default media player in Ubuntu. Here’s my take on that.

Canonical's Gerry Carr said that Ubuntu was not deliberately looking for Mono-based applications nor is it excluding them. The Canonical Board has yet to make a policy decision on Mono. He said that there will be one more piece of Mono based software called Banshee in 9.10. Banshee is an audio player and might replace Rhythmbox.

Banshee is a popular music management tool for Linux. The default version of Banshee in Ubuntu Karmic is Banshee 1.5.1. Banshee has already reached version Banshee 1.5.2. This is what you need to do to get the latest version of banshee in Ubuntu.

A bizarre decision is made just weeks before the final release of Ubuntu 10.04 because an F-Spot (Mono) competitor is removed and Banshee (Mono) gains integration with Ubuntu One
Steven Rosenberg has just published a rave (finally!) about Ubuntu 10.04. He particularly likes gThumb, which can help remove Mono from Ubuntu.

A popular Mono-free "dock" application for GNU/Linux faces attempts to put C# applets in it

Insertion of Mono-based software like Banshee endangers Ubuntu as it makes the parent company more reliant on Microsoft and more sensitive to Microsoft extortion

Another step towards abolishment of Mono as by-default component

Before I begin this essay, I would like to go ahead and pre-empt any attempts to make me out like I’m a Mono shill. I’m far from it. The only application that uses Mono that I found remotely useful was F-Spot. I see no point in running Tomboy when I can just use Gedit (since files are opened in multiple tabs, just like EditPad).