.NET MONO Which Operating System is Running?

Do you want to execute operating system specific code (exes) in the .NET/Mono framework? I’ll go over how you can do that.

Below is part of a class I had written that can determine if Linux or Windows is running. Keep in mind that for the code to properly detect Mac OS, you will need to figure out the proper platform number and modify the code respectively.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.Diagnostics;

namespace namespace1
{
    public static class HostOS
    {
        /// <summary>
        /// An enumerator that holds a list of possible operating systems
        /// this code can execute on.
        /// </summary>
        public enum HostEnvironment
        {
            Windows,
            Linux
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Determine the operating system this program is running on.
        /// </summary>
        /// <returns>The current operating system</returns>
        /// <remarks>
        /// The current choices are only Linux or Windows.
        /// It checks if the OS is Linux; otherwise, it defaults to Windows.
        /// If other OS are implemented in the future, this
        /// would need to be changed.
        /// </remarks>
        public static HostEnvironment DetermineHostEnvironment()
        {
            HostEnvironment currentHost;
            int platformNumber = (int)Environment.OSVersion.Platform;

            // Determine if the host is a *nix operating system
            // These numbers take into account historic values,
            // do an internet search for details
            if (platformNumber == 4 || platformNumber == 6 || platformNumber == 128)
            {
                // Running on *nix
                currentHost = HostEnvironment.Linux;
            }
            else
            {
                // Not running on *nix (defaults to Windows)
                currentHost = HostEnvironment.Windows;
            }

            return currentHost;
        }
    }
}

I had written this class because I have been writing code that I develop on Windows, but needs to run in Linux. Ideally, I wanted it to work in both operating systems for various reasons. The program I was writing needed to call a few console applications that were operating system specific, but had versions for both Windows and Linux. Thanks to the System.Diagnostics namespace, it’s quite easy to run the OS specific code!