.NET Platform Overview and Roadmap

Microsoft released .NET 5 on Nov 10

There are many important improvements in .NET 5.0:

• .NET 5.0 is already battle-tested by being hosted for months at dot.net and Bing.com (version).
• Performance is greatly improved across many components and is described in detail at Performance Improvements in .NET 5.0, Arm64 Performance in .NET 5.0, and gRPC.
• C# 9 and F# 5 offer new language improvements such as top-level programs and records for C# 9, while F# 5 offers interactive programming and a performance boost for functional programming on .NET.
• .NET libraries have enhanced performance for Json serialization, regular expressions, and HTTP (HTTP 1.1, HTTP/2). They are also are now completely annotated for nullability.
• P95 latency has dropped due to refinements in the GC, tiered compilation, and other areas.
• Application deployment options are better, with ClickOnce client app publishing, single-file apps, reduced container image size, and the addition of Server Core container images.
• Platform scope expanded with Windows Arm64 and WebAssembly.

You can download .NET 5.0, for Windows, macOS, and Linux, for x86, x64, Arm32, Arm64.

Starting with .NET 5, Microsoft intends to ship a major version of .NET once a year, these releases will happen every November and every other release will be LTS.

LTS(Long Term Support) releases are supported for three years after the initial release.

Current releases are supported for three months after a subsequent Current or LTS release.

How do the different support tracks work?

Customers choosing LTS will need the latest patch update installed to qualify for support. If a system is running 3.1 and 3.1.x has been released, 3.1.x will need to be installed as a first step. Once a patch update has been installed, applications will begin using the update by default. LTS releases will be supported for 3 years after general availability, or for a 12-month Maintenance period after the next LTS release ships, whichever is longer.

In addition to staying current with the latest patch update, customers using Current need to update as new minor versions are released to stay in support. The latest released minor version will become the minimum serviceable baseline after release. After a 3-month Maintenance period, the previous minor version will no longer be supported. For example, after 3.1 was released, systems running version 3.0 had 3 months to update to 3.1 to remain eligible for support.