What is Difference Between .Core CLR VS Mono CLR? Then why Microsoft maintain run time environments?

Question

What is Difference Between .Core CLR VS Mono CLR? Then why Microsoft maintain different run time environments ?

Nevlin

Answer 1

Both are implementations of the .NET Standard but they have different implementation details. Mono is historically grown by the need of a cross-platform .NET implementation that runs everywhere. Later Mono became the foundation for Xamarin.

.NET Core is designed for performance, cross-platform, scalable cloud scenarios and the main workload is ASP.NET Core that runs on it. It's true that both are similar in the API surface and cross-platform capabilities, but they were created with other requirements in mind.

Both framework implementations are well supported. Depending on what you need to do, you pick one of them:

.NET Core

• ASP.NET Core (Web Apps)
• Desktop Apps WPF, WF (.NET Core 3.0 and Windows only)
• Console Apps

Mono

• Games (with Unity)
• Console Apps
• Desktop Apps (e.g. GTK#, cross-platform)
• Mobile Apps (Android, iOS)

Economically

Some addition, 1) Mono supports more gaming frameworks than Unity (MonoGame for instance). 2) Mono also supports more operating systems, mono-project.com/docs/about-mono/supported-platforms 3) Mono enables Blazor (WebAssembly). 4) .NET 5 is the future, devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/introducing-net-5 – Deathful