Grasshopper 2.0 enables deployment of applications on the Apache Tomcat Java servlet container; Mainsoft's Visual MainWin provides the same functionality for deploying applications with commercial application servers.

New features in version 2.0 include support of the Visual Studio 2005 IDE and the .Net Framework 2.0. Also, C# developers can use the new IDE as well as C# 2.0 features and ASP.Net controls to develop Web applications.

The free Grasshopper 2.0 Technology Preview also can be used to port the Microsoft Personal Web Site Starter Kit to run on Tomcat.

"[Developers] can keep programming in VB.Net, C# [and] ASP.Net from Visual Studio and create applications which will run cross-platform on Linux, and we do that by using the open source .Net Framework," which is Mono, said Yaacov Cohen, president and CEO of Mainsoft.

With Grasshopper, the Microsoft intermediate language is compiled to Java byte code. Mono, meanwhile, features compiler tools and class libraries as well as a runtime engine for executing .Net applications.