Thanks to Miguel and his team for making it easier than ever for us Windows-bound .NET geeks to give Mono a try. It's a fairly big download but well worth it. You can now download a VMWare virtual machine image of Mono 1.2.2.1 on openSUSE 10.2 and the free VMWare Player. Install the player and open the unzipped VM file. Easy peasy. I had to play with network settings a bit but that was easy.

There is no easier way to check out Mono on Linux. No partitions to worry about. No setup to worry about. No drivers to mess with such as the constant failure I would get with my dual monitor card when I tried earlier to get SUSE running on a separate partition on my box which led to me giving up.

I recommend you give it a try. Amazing what the Mono team has done. Kudos again to Miguel and his team and all those who have contributed to the Mono project.