Updates for linux install instructions

[adegeo]

Summary

Update all the Linux distro install articles for the projected information. This PR relies on the fact that the feeds are updated. For example, .NET 7 is still not available in the Ubuntu jammy and Kinetic feeds.

I also simplified a lot of the tables and removed outdated information.

Fixes #32521
Fixes #30457
Fixes #32541
Fixes #32663
Fixes #32498

[adegeo]

@omajid Can you verify RHEL and the related distros? Thanks!

[omajid]

Here's the status of .NET packages for Fedora/RHEL-based distros that I know of:

• CentOS
  • Only non-EOL version is CentOS 7, where Microsoft is the only one producing .NET packages for
• CentOS Stream 8
  • .NET Core 3.1, .NET 6 seem to be available. I expected .NET 7 to be available too, but it's not. I need to look into this.
• CentOS Stream 9
  • .NET 6 and .NET 7 are available
• Fedora
  • Fedora 35: .NET Core 3.1 and .NET 6 are currently available
  • Fedora 36: .NET Core 3.1 and .NET 6 are currently available
  • Fedora 37 (about to be released in a few days): Only.NET 6 is currently available
  • .NET 7 packages are being reviewed for inclusion in Fedora 36 and later. Fedora 35 is being left out because it goes EOL in about a month or so.
• RHEL 7
  • .NET Core 3.1 and .NET 6 are available. .NET 7 is not available, and there are no plans to add it.
• RHEL 8 (as of 8.7)
  • .NET Core 3.1, .NET 6 and .NET 7 are all available
• RHEL 9 (as of 9.1, which was released today)
  • .NET 6 and .NET 7 are available

[omajid]

I didn't look into the .NET 5.0 packages, let me know if you want me to look into those as well.

[omajid]

Would it be worth it to include the architectures somewhere? The Microsoft feed only provides .NET packages for x64. Some distros provide packages for arm64 as well. Alpine is the only one that provides packages for arm (or is it arm32?). Only RHEL 8 and 9 provide ppc64le packages.

[tdykstra]

Looks good, I just noted a few typos.

[adegeo]

@omajid Thank you for the information. I've updated the articles. For Fedora I removed .NET 7 for the time being but still cleaned things up. Let me know when it's .NET 7 is ready and I'll update the article.

Regarding architecture, it's not something we've really added to any of the install docs yet. We've also not really received much feedback as to confusion about it except when people are trying to install via the MS package manager feed on Ubuntu ARM. Besides that (which the article has a note after that feedback) I've not seen anything else, though I've not been paying much attention to it lately.

[omajid]

cc @mirespace to comment on Ubuntu

My understanding is .NET 7 packages in Ubuntu (22.04 and later) aren't quite ready yet.

[mirespace]

Hi!

.NET 7 is expected to be released next December on 22.10 (not on 22.04), for amd64 and arm64.
.NET 6 will be released for arm64, hopefully by the end of this week/beginning of next week in 22.10 and 22.04, along with the amd64 architecture which is already being shipped.

[ayakael]

Would it be worth it to include the architectures somewhere? The Microsoft feed only provides .NET packages for x64. Some distros provide packages for arm64 as well. Alpine is the only one that provides packages for arm (or is it arm32?). Only RHEL 8 and 9 provide ppc64le packages.

For now Alpine only provides packages for aarch64, armv7, x86_64 and s390x. I can send a diff for up-to-date Alpine page, but I'll have to wait a few days as I'm too busy today.

[adegeo]

@ayakael I ported your diff info, please review and let me know what you think. .NET 6 is still supported on 3.16 correct? Is it just not in the package manager? You marked it as not supportred.

[ayakael]

@ayakael I ported your diff info, please review and let me know what you think. .NET 6 is still supported on 3.16 correct? Is it just not in the package manager? You marked it as not supportred.

.NET6 is indeed still supported on 3.16. The confusion might stem from the architecture section, where s390x support of .NET6 only starts with 3.17. Also, I see that you mark versions on and before 3.15 as supported. This is not the case from Alpine's perspective, as the package was only initially included in 3.16. Should the instructions more explicitely allign with what is supported by Alpine or should they allign more with what is supported by Microsoft?

Also, for what it's worth, I kind of liked the old tables, but I understand the desire to simplify them haha

[adegeo]

@ayakael

.NET6 is indeed still supported on 3.16. The confusion might stem from the architecture section, where s390x support of .NET6 only starts with 3.17. Also, I see that you mark versions on and before 3.15 as supported. This is not the case from Alpine's perspective, as the package was only initially included in 3.16. Should the instructions more explicitely allign with what is supported by Alpine or should they allign more with what is supported by Microsoft?

Correct, we want to state what is supported from Microsofts standpoint via manual installation, but also point out that there are packages available in the feeds. Does that make sense? Do you think something should be adjusted?

Also, for what it's worth, I kind of liked the old tables, but I understand the desire to simplify them haha

I also liked the old tables....

[ayakael]

@ayakael

.NET6 is indeed still supported on 3.16. The confusion might stem from the architecture section, where s390x support of .NET6 only starts with 3.17. Also, I see that you mark versions on and before 3.15 as supported. This is not the case from Alpine's perspective, as the package was only initially included in 3.16. Should the instructions more explicitely allign with what is supported by Alpine or should they allign more with what is supported by Microsoft?

Correct, we want to state what is supported from Microsofts standpoint via manual installation, but also point out that there are packages available in the feeds. Does that make sense? Do you think something should be adjusted?

Also, for what it's worth, I kind of liked the old tables, but I understand the desire to simplify them haha

I also liked the old tables....

Could we bring back the old tables? Alpine would look like this:

- ✔️ indicates that the version of Alpine or .NET is still supported.
- A ❌ indicates that the version of Alpine or .NET isn't supported on that Alpine release.
- When both a version of Alpine and a version of .NET have ✔️, that OS and .NET combination is supported.

| Alpine  | .NET 6 | .NET 7 |
|---------|--------|--------|
| ✔️ 3.17  | ✔️ 6.0  | ✔️ 7.0  |
| ✔️ 3.16  | ✔️ 6.0  | ✔️ 7.0  |
| ✔️ 3.15  | ✔️ 6.0  | ✔️ 7.0  |
| ✔️ 3.14  | ✔️ 6.0  | ❌ 7.0  |

[!INCLUDE [versions-not-supported](includes/versions-not-supported.md)]

## Supported architectures on Alpine package
- ✔️ indicates that the architecture of Alpine or .NET is still supported.
- A ❌ indicates that the architecture of Alpine or .NET isn't supported
- The version number is when the the package was first released for that platform
- Note that only `x86_64`, `armv7`, `aarch64` is officially supported by Microsoft. Other architectures are supported by the distribution maintainers.

| Architecture | .NET 6 | .NET 7 |
|--------------|--------|--------|
| x86_64       | ✔️ 3.16 | ✔️ 3.17 |
| x86          | ❌      | ❌      |
| aarch64      | ✔️ 3.16 | ✔️ 3.17 |
| armv7        | ✔️ 3.16 | ✔️ 3.17 |
| armhf        | ❌      | ❌      |
| s390x        | ✔️ 3.17 | ❌      |
| ppc64le      | ❌      | ❌      |
| riscv64      | ❌      | ❌      |

With 3.1 being EOL in a few weeks, I'd propose we remove 3.1 off the tables.

[adegeo]

Right now the design is to simplify the tables, in line with the rest of the articles. I want to merge this now and then we can follow up with another PR for 3.1 😁 This PR has taken too long due to the lag of everything 😢