.NET 3.0 Drops pre-XP Support

September 06, 2006

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:

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.