.NET 3.0 Drops pre-XP Support

I was looking at the .NET 3.0 site today and noticed something I had previously missed. Under Supported Operating Systems it lists the following:

  • Microsoft Windows 2003 Server Service Pack 1 (SP1)
  • Windows XP SP2
  • Windows Vista Release Candidate

The removal of 9x and NT from the mix was expected. But the removal of Windows 2000 SP3 surprised me quite a bit.

A lot of people are just now starting to cycle out their Windows 2000 servers. I wonder if rather than leading to faster server replacement this lead to slower adoption of .Net 3.0.

I fully understand why they want to focus on the new platforms but I was a bit surprised by it. Especially when you consider that .NET 3.0 is - from my understanding of it - really just 2.0 with WinFX support.

15 Comments

  • But Marc, you have explained it yourself in your last statement "Especially when you consider that .NET 3.0 is - from my understanding of it - really just 2.0 with WinFX support.".

    You might forget, but WinFX was originally only a Vista technology, it didn't even work on Windows XP or Windows Server 2003.

    Microsoft went way out of their way to back port it to Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 at considerable expense.

    Thus instead of WinFX being only Vista, it will thankfully work on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 due to this large effort.

    Of course it does not work on Windows 2000 - but I am just thankful it was backported to XP and Server 2003. As you said "NET 3.0 is - from my understanding of it - really just 2.0 with WinFX support. "

    So yes: .NET 2 will continue to run on Windows 2000, but the WinFX stuff will not run on windows 2000 and thus .NET 3 will not run on Windows 2000 as .NET 3 is just WinFX renamed.

  • The point is that this is going to add an extra layer of confusion for the public. From the outside this is simply a case of ".NET no longer supports Windows 2000".

    I'm glad they ported WinFX backwards, but renaming it .NET 3.0 is just going to confuse people. They are creating a situation where people will think .NET 2.0 is for servers and 3.0 is for clients.  

  • There is no reason to expect Microsoft to support WinFX on Windows 2000. What I think is a mistake is naming it .NET 3.0 when the only change is a client-side presentation layer. I would have preferred to see it as a library you add to .NET 2.0 rather than adding confusion about CLR version vs. .NET version.

  • .NET 3.0 is hardly just a 'client-side presentation layer.'

    While many people talk about WPF, there's also WF, WCF, and many ancillary features.

  • Adopting .Net 3.0 will be difficult for people who are creating windows Application for general people. Its imposible to consider that all your client will have windows XP while many people still use windows 98, windows 2000 server. If you create and application and it does not work on a client machine the application has no use waht so ever. I guess people will have to stick to dot net framework 2.0 for application created for any one and every one

  • Excellent point about WF and WCF. But I don't think it changes my point - by not supporting Windows 2000 they are make it much more difficult to adopt .NET 3.0.

  • I too was disappointed to learn that MS was not supporting WinFX on Win2K. We have roughly 30% of our enterprise clients still on the Win2K platform. I can understand certain functionality not being supported such as object relying on the http.sys driver but why the entire framework? WCF and WF is such a great enhancement to Windows and our development arsenal. :(

  • After 4~5 years later, .NET 4.0 or .NET 5.0 will not support Windows XP and Windows Vista.
    This kind of trouble will happen again and again.
    At this point, many people will move to Java rather than adopt .NET 3.0, I think.
    What do you think about this?

  • Few if any will move to Java. Java's major strength is its cross platform ability but anyone working with .NET 2.0 has already made that choice. And then there is the issue of tools - Eclipse is years away (if ever) from beating Visual Studio.

    What will happen is people will take longer to move off of .NET 2.0.

  • Makes sense in terms of technology that they dropped support.

    But welcome to the real world.
    People are still using Windows 98, and a lot of our customers, and my non -technical colleagues, still use Windows 2000.

    Its going to be hard to convince my management to develop our next projct using .NET 3.0 since it doesn't work on Windows 2000.

  • vb6 good bye, windows 2000 good bye. The clients using this platforms, good bye!!!

    What is microsoft people thinking?

  • Nonami:
    I could not disagree more. The only issue with WPF at this time is tool support (solved by VS 2008). I have had no problems with the technology at all.

    I would love to see any stats you have on the number of 1.1 vs 2.0 packages. Frankly I don't see how you would even know.

    And what Microsoft is using today has nothing to do with the quality of .NET. It has to do with the size of the existing code bases they are working with. They are not about to re-write Excel just because they like C# - that would be crazy.

    The fact that you lump C++ and HTML into the same category somewhat limits your credibility.

  • Another thing that no one is taking into account is that MS no longer supports Windows 2000, NT, or 98 etc.

    The fact that someone is still running it shouldn't matter or even be part of the thought process.

    These OS's are so old, out of date, and suceptable to viruses, and attacks that they should not be in use in any type of business situation, so whether or not .NET supports them is rather irrelevant, it is not a good business practice to still be running these OS's.

    and any of this doesn't even take into account the fact that the machine anyone is still running these Os's on won't likely be able to handle what you are building for a program to begin with.

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