.NET Core is an open-source, general-purpose development platform maintained by Microsoft and the .NET community on GitHub. It's cross-platform (supporting Windows, macOS, and Linux) and can be used to build device, cloud, and IoT applications.
See About .NET Core to learn more about .NET Core, including its characteristics, supported languages and frameworks, and key APIs.
Check out .NET Core Tutorials to learn how to create a simple .NET Core application. It only takes a few minutes to get your first app up and running. If you want to try .NET Core in your browser, look at the Numbers in C# online tutorial.
Download .NET Core
Download the .NET Core SDK to try .NET Core on your Windows, macOS, or Linux machine. And if you prefer to use Docker containers, visit the .NET Core Docker Hub.
All .NET Core versions are available at .NET Core Downloads if you're looking for another .NET Core version.
.NET Core 3.0
The latest version is .NET Core 3.0. New features include Windows Desktop support with Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Windows Forms, full stack C# web development with Blazor, new enhancements to SignalR and Azure SignalR Service, new C# language features with C# 8, and much more. For a full listing of the new features in .NET Core 3.0, see What's new in .NET Core 3.0.
Create your first application
After installing the .NET Core SDK, open a command prompt. Type the following dotnet commands to create and run a C# application:
dotnet new console
dotnet run
You should see the following output:
Hello World!
Support
.NET Core is supported by Microsoft, on Windows, macOS, and Linux. It's updated for security and quality several times a year, typically monthly.
.NET Core binary distributions are built and tested on Microsoft-maintained servers in Azure and supported just like any Microsoft product.
Red Hat supports .NET Core on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Red Hat builds .NET Core from source and makes it available in the Red Hat Software Collections. Red Hat and Microsoft collaborate to ensure that .NET Core works well on RHEL.