What is “.NET Core”?

Question

Recently in an official .NET Framework Blog it was announced that .NET Core is going open source.

Ironically, the author mentions that what .NET Core is wil

Answer 1

I was trying to create a new project in Visual Studio 2017 today (recently upgraded from Visual Studio 2015) and noticed new set of choices for the type of project. Either they're new or it's been a while since I started a new project!! :)

I came across this documentation link and found it very useful, so I am sharing. The details of the bullets are also provided in the article. I am just posting bullets here:

You should use .NET Core for your server application when:

You have cross-platform needs.
You are targeting microservices.
You are using Docker containers.
You need high performance and scalable systems.
You need side by side of .NET versions by application.

You should use .NET Framework for your server application when:

Your application currently uses .NET Framework (recommendation is to extend instead of migrating)
You need to use third-party .NET libraries or NuGet packages not available for .NET Core.
You need to use .NET technologies that are not available for .NET Core.
You need to use a platform that doesn’t support .NET Core.

This link provides a glossary of .NET terms.

EDIT 10/7/2020 Check out .NET 5.0 - "... just one .NET going forward, and you will be able to use it to target Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS, Android, tvOS, watchOS and WebAssembly and more" It's supposed to be released November 2020.