Out of all my experiences (heh) with Linux, Mono has to be the best one. It just works. I'm writing a set of web services to manage Asterisk. Things like adding users to the dialplan, configuring incoming numbers, voicemail, etc. I wrote a library to deal with the config files in VS2005, and tested on VS2005. Drag and drop, and bingo: it works just fine on Linux.

I just got a nice queued reload finished for Asterisk via my webservices. A little bit of threading code, and 40 lines later, it's done. Build, drag and drop (Samba), and presto. Works, smoothly. I just can't stress how cool it is to be able to work with MS tools, use shared code libraries with Windows, and then just drag and drop over the network and have it running right alongside with Asterisk.

We're doing a pretty ambitious project, the entire front-end on Windows, and Linux for everything to do with the voice. So far, everything's been a breeze, thanks to .NET. Not having to write in C, or ... PHP <shudder> ... is so nice. At any rate, we're hoping to launch by the end of the month. So if we do, I'll go into more detail on what things .NET let us just speed right through.

And already, I've made a new convert. We hired a guy who has worked with Java and PHP, never with .NET. You should of seen his face and heard his comments when I took him on a whirlwind tour of ASP.NET 2 and web services, adding in xcopy deployment to Linux in to boot. Wow :).