Microsoft releases .NET 5.0 Final

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Microsoft has released .NET 5.0 final on November 10, 2020. The new version of the company's .NET framework is available for Windows, Mac OS, Linux, and ARM operating systems.  Microsoft promises that .NET 5.0 improves performance "greatly", that it includes language improvements, and highlights that Windows ARM64 and WebAssembly were added to the supported platforms in that release.

The announcement was made during the virtual .NET Conf 2020 designed specifically to provide developers with information about the new releases. The company released ASP.Net Core, EF Core, C# 9, and F# 5 on November 10, 2020 as well.

Microsoft unveiled .NET 5.0 back in May 2019 with the intention to release the final version of .NET 5.0 in November 2020. New major versions of .NET will be released once a year in November; the next major release, .NET 6.0, will be released in November 2021. Microsoft labels .NET 5.0 as a current release and will support it until February 2022 (approximately three months after .NET 6.0 is released).

Visual Studio 16.8 or later is required to use .NET 5.0 on Windows machines; Mac OS developers need the latest version of Visual Studio for Mac, and C# extension and Visual Studio Code support .NET 5.0 and C# 9 already.

Major .NET 5.0 changes and improvements

• Performance improvements across the board. Microsoft published a detailed analysis that includes benchmark results here. Sorting algorithm and Just in Time compiler performance has increased significantly.
  
• Improved performance for .NET libraries, e.g. Json serialization, regular expressions, HTTP.
  
• P95 latency drop thanks to improvements in areas such as garbage collection or tiered compilation.
  
• Improved application deployment options, e.g. Server Core container images, single-file apps and reduced container image sizes.
  
• Expanded platform scope to include Windows ARM64 and WebAssembly.
  
• C# 9 and F# 5 language improvements.
  

Microsoft published a detailed post on its Dot Net Dev Blog that provides additional information about the new features and improvements of .NET 5.0.  Release notes for the latest .NET Core updates are available here.

Downloads are provided on the official Dot Net download site; there you find SDK and runtime downloads for all supported operating systems.
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