How to Install Mono on Ubuntu 18.04 & 16.04

The Mono project is sponsored by the Microsoft. It is an open source, cross platform implementation of Microsoft .NET Framework. Mono supports most the modern operating systems with 32-bit and 64-bit architecture. This tutorial will help you to install Mono on Ubuntu 18.04 & 16.04 systems.

Useful tutorial:

• How to Install Visual Studio Code on Ubuntu

Prerequisites

Login to the Ubuntu system with sudo privileged account.

Install Mono on Ubuntu

First of all, install some required packages and import GPG key to your system.

sudo apt install gnupg ca-certificates
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys D3D831EF

You need to add Apt repository provide by the official project team. Use one of the following commands to add Mono repository to your system based on Ubuntu version.

### Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 
echo "deb https://download.mono-project.com/repo/ubuntu stable-bionic main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mono-stable.list

### Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 
echo "deb https://download.mono-project.com/repo/ubuntu stable-xenial main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mono-stable.list

Once the repository is added. Update the apt cache and install Mono packages on your Ubuntu system.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install mono-complete mono-devel

The mono-devel package is used to compile code. The mono-complete package is used to install everything on the system.

Check Mono Version

Once the installation has finished on your system. Let’s check the installed Mono version using the following command.

mono --version

Output:

Mono JIT compiler version 6.8.0.105 (tarball Tue Feb  4 21:20:20 UTC 2020)
Copyright (C) 2002-2014 Novell, Inc, Xamarin Inc and Contributors. www.mono-project.com
        TLS:           __thread
        SIGSEGV:       altstack
        Notifications: epoll
        Architecture:  amd64
        Disabled:      none
        Misc:          softdebug
        Interpreter:   yes
        LLVM:          yes(610)
        Suspend:       hybrid
        GC:            sgen (concurrent by default)

Run Example with Mono

As you have installed Mono on your Ubuntu system. Create a sample c# program to run with Mono. Create a Welcome.cs file and edit in your favorite text editor.

vim Welcome.cs

Add below value to file.

Save file and close it. Then compile the c# program with the c# compiler using below command.

csc Welcome.cs

Once the compilation finished successfully, it will create a exe file in the local directory with the same name as script. In this case a Welcome.exe file is generated in my local directory.

Set the exectue permission and then run the program

chmod +x Welcome.exe
./Welcome.exe

You will see the output like below screenshot:

All done, You have successfully installed Mono on your Ubuntu system. Next you may requried to install Visual Studio Code on Ubuntu.