One of the biggest selling points for Visual Studio is its debugging experience. Even some of the most ardent critics of Microsoft's development tools reluctantly acknowledge its capabilities. Recently Miguel de Icaza's announced that the Mono team intends to leverage this power to improve debugging Mono applications running on Linux.
The Visual Studio Debugger for Mono consists of two components. The first is a remote debugger host. It is similar to the one used by Windows/.NET in that it runs as a service. But unlike the Windows version, which can only attach to running processes, this allows applications to be remotely launched. When the application is started within Visual Studio via a special plug-in, the binaries are uploaded to the Linux machine and run under the debugger.
Visual Studio Debugger for Mono is still in a limited alpha. Developers wishing to try it need to sign up for the preview on the Mono website.