One of the main benefits of .NET Core is that it is cross-platform, which means that it runs on a wide variety of operating systems. You no longer need a dependency on the Windows OS to host or even develop your .NET application. Although this was technically possible before, it is now easier than ever and actively encouraged by Microsoft. They even provide Linux servers on Azure and premade Docker images on which you can build and host your code.
In this chapter, we will show you how to get started with the latest tooling on the OS of your choice. We'll cover the process of setting up a development environment on Windows, macOS (previously OS X), and Linux. Each system has a preferred solution, but there is cross-platform tooling available that will work on any of them.
We will also discuss the modern DevOps way of developing applications and deploying them, using containers. In particular, we will cover how to work with Docker. Containers are a great...