Installing C# on Ubuntu Linux

Background

Install the SDK

Install the Runtime

Create an Application

External Reading

Background

The .NET framework was main implementation of the open specification, Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) which is platform independent target for high level languages.

The Common Language Runtime (CLR) is synonymous to Java’s JRE. Compilers target the CLR and emit managed code. This code permits cross-language integration and exception handling.

The .NET framework was cross-platform by design only, not on implementation. Until about 2012, the .NET Runtime (CLR) was for Windows, and the .Net Framework was Windows-centric. There was limited cross-platform support from the Mono project, being unsupported, it lagged behind the official releases.

In June of 2016, Microsoft released .NET Core. This was a port of the CLR to Linux with a rewriting of the framework from the ground up. Version 2.0 was released in 2017, and version 3.0 in 2019. This numbering system conflicted with the Windows proprietary .NET framework numbering. As such, version 4 was skipped and .NET 5.0 was released in 2020 followed by .NET 6.0 in 2021.

As of version 5.0, the old .NET Framework was given “legacy support” status, and .NET Core was renamed to just .NET. This is why the confusion really gets bad.

In summary, .NET Framework had versions 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, and 4.0-4.8. It will never have a 5.0 version. While .NET Core had versions 1.0, 2.0, 2.1, 3.0, and 3.1. Then it was renamed, to just .NET 5.

Future versions of .NET will provide LTS for even-numbered versions. New versions release every November.

This image is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Overview_of_the_Common_Language_Infrastructure_2015.svg

Install the SDK

source

The .NET SDK allows you to develop apps with .NET. If you install the .NET SDK, you don’t need to install the runtime.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y dotnet6

Install the runtime (optional)

The ASP.NET Core Runtime allows you to run apps that were made with .NET that didn’t provide the runtime.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y aspnetcore-runtime-6.0

You can install the .NET Runtime, which doesn’t include ASP.NET Core.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y dotnet-runtime-6.0

Create an application

Create a new .NET application called “HelloWorld”

1. Open your terminal
2. Create and enter a new directory called “HelloWorld”
3. Use the “dotnet” command to create a new application.

dotnet new console --framework net6.0

In your IDE, replace the contents of Program.cs with the following code:

namespace HelloWorld {
    class Program {
        static void Main(string[] args) {
            Console.WriteLine("Hello World!");
        }
    }
}

Alternatively you can create a new console app with the directory structure by including the output flag (-o).

dotnet new console -o HelloWorld

External Reading

Create a Class Library

Tags: C#getting startedlinux