Mono coming soon. Very soon.

Depending on how the new code travels through the QA process, Mono could come to the main Second Life grid within the next four weeks, says Linden Lab.

Mono (an open source implementation of Microsoft's .NET) is to be deployed as an additional, faster script runtime engine that should greatly speed many common scripting operations, increase stability and reduce load. Linden Lab says that it is unlikely that we'll see Mono deployed within two weeks, but within four is certainly not out of the ballpark.

Currently Mono is available for testing on the Beta grid, and scripters should take the opportunity to test their scripts there and get bug-reports filed sooner, rather than later.

The new script runtime engine does not add (and is not presently intended to add) support for any languages other than the already existing LSL.