How to Install Mono on Debian 10

Mono is a platform for developing and running cross-platform applications based on the ECMA/ISO Standards. It is a free and open-source implementation of Microsoft’s .NET framework.

This article provides information on how to install Mono on Debian 10.

Prerequisites #

The instructions assume that you are logged in as root or user with sudo privileges .

Installing Mono on Debian #

Mono is not available in the standard Debian repositories. We’ll install the Mono packages from the official Mono’s repositories. It is a relatively straightforward process and will only take a few minutes.

1. Start by installing the necessary packages:

   Terminal

   sudo apt update
   sudo apt install dirmngr gnupg apt-transport-https ca-certificates

2. Enter the following command to import the repository’s GPG key:

   Terminal

   sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys 3FA7E0328081BFF6A14DA29AA6A19B38D3D831EF

   The output should look like below:

   output

   gpg: key A6A19B38D3D831EF: public key "Xamarin Public Jenkins (auto-signing) <releng@xamarin.com>" imported
   gpg: Total number processed: 1
   gpg:               imported: 1

3. Add the Mono repository to your system sources’ list:

   Terminal

   sudo sh -c 'echo "deb https://download.mono-project.com/repo/debian/ stable-buster main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mono-official-stable.list'

4. Once the apt repository is enabled , update the packages list and install Mono:

   Terminal

   sudo apt update
   sudo apt install mono-complete 

   mono-complete is a meta-package that installs everything you need for Mono development, including the runtime, development tools, and all libraries.

5. Verify the installation printing the Mono version:

   Terminal

   mono --version

   At the time of writing this article, the latest stable version of Mono is 6.8.0 Stable (6.8.0.105).

   output

   Mono JIT compiler version 6.8.0.105 (tarball Tue Feb  4 21:20:43 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)

That’s it. You have successfully installed Mono on your Ubuntu, and you can start developing your application.

Getting Started with Mono #

To verify that everything is set up correctly, we’ll build a Hello World program that will print the classic “hello world” message.

Open your text editor and create a file named hello.cs with the following content:

using System;

public class HelloWorld
{
    public static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        Console.WriteLine ("Hello World!");
    }
}

Use the csc compiler to build the program:

csc hello.cs

The command above will build an executable named hello.exe.

Run the executable using the command below:

mono hello.exe

The output should look something like this:

Hello, World

To be able to execute the program only by typing its name, you’ll need to make the file executable :

chmod +x hello.exe

You can now run the hello.exe file by typing:

./hello.exe

Conclusion #

The latest stable Mono release packages are available for installation from the official Mono repository.

If you hit a problem or have feedback, leave a comment below.

About the authors

Dejan Panovski

Dejan Panovski is the founder of Linuxize, an RHCSA-certified Linux system administrator and DevOps engineer based in Skopje, Macedonia. Author of 800+ Linux tutorials with 20+ years of experience turning complex Linux tasks into clear, reliable guides.

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