[RESOLVED] [2008] How to use oldest .Net Framwork possible?

[jmcilhinney]

Yes and no. The .NET Framework has ALWAYS been available via Windows Update. It's not a critical update though, so it's not installed via Automatic Updates. It makes perfect sense that it's not a critical update because it's not critical. There's no point meed to install all five Frameworks if you don't use all five. People have the choice to install all or none. Every Windows user should be visiting Microsoft Update regularly so they should be aware of this, but of course many Windows users simply don't bother with any system maintenance.

[sytto]

"What .Net Frameworks should I use?"

Easy answer: 2.0

Vista. I recently installed Vista and to me it seemed it came with all the frameworks up to 3.0. Now were they there when i freshly installed Vista? i'm not sure. I let windows run all the updates immediately so they could have come in with that. But they are there now and i didn’t consciously download them so one could say they do come with all frameworks up to 3.0.

It doesn't come with 3.5 for sure as i put vb2008 on that machine and wow, what a big download 3.5 was and with a reboot to boot.

[jmcilhinney]

"What .Net Frameworks should I use?"

Easy answer: 2.0

Vista. I recently installed Vista and to me it seemed it came with all the frameworks up to 3.0. Now were they there when i freshly installed Vista? i'm not sure. I let windows run all the updates immediately so they could have come in with that. But they are there now and i didn’t consciously download them so one could say they do come with all frameworks up to 3.0.

It doesn't come with 3.5 for sure as i put vb2008 on that machine and wow, what a big download 3.5 was and with a reboot to boot.

Obviously every developer should target version 2.0. That way no-one will ever have to install version 3.5. I look forward to the day when we're up to .NET 10.0 but we still recommend targeting version 2.0 because no-one has 10.0 installed yet. Far more people are still using XP than Vista and it didn't have any Frameworks installed, so maybe we shouldn't use .NET at all. If you were happy to have XP users install version 2.0, or even version 1.0 or 1.1 for that matter, why is a Vista user installing version 3.5 any different?