Is the .NET framework necessary if not on a network?

[Ken90630]

If a person is not on any kind of network, other than having a single Internet connection, is Microsoft's .NET framework necessary to have on the computer? Can it be removed via Add/Remove Programs without causing any problems?

 

[pcgeek11]

Originally posted by: Ken90630
If a person is not on any kind of network, other than having a single Internet connection, is Microsoft's .NET framework necessary to have on the computer? Can it be removed via Add/Remove Programs without causing any problems?

Some applications require it network or not...

Yes you can remove it from the " Add/remove programs " list.

pcgeek

 

[Aluvus]

.NET is a framework for applications. It isn't especially related to networking (much less the .net top-level domain), even though the name implies as much.

Leave it be. It's useful. Removing it won't make your computer burst into flames, but will prevent you from running some applications.

 

[Brazen]

Yeah, it's an application framework and not really having anything to do with being on a network. You can recognize a potential .NET application by it being slow and buggy, usually even worse than java applications.

 

[Ken90630]

Thanks, guys. I'll leave it alone.

One more question: Is there any reason to have .NET 1.0 if .NET 2.0 is installed on the machine? Does 2.0 replace 1.0 (presumably), or does it "piggy back" onto 1.0? Dumb question, I know, but I don't know. Once 2.0 is installed, can I uninstall 1.0 w/o causing any problems?

 

[Digobick]

I'll try to answer your three questions:

1. The .NET Framework 2.0 is supposed to be backwards compatible with version 1.1. However, some programs that were written for version 1.1 might not install if it's not there.

2. No, 2.0 does not "piggy back" on version 1.0/1.1. Much of version 1.1 was rewritten for 2.0, and a lot of new functionality was added as well. To make matters somewhat more confusing, the .NET Framework 3.0 will "piggy back" on version 2.0. Version 3.0 adds many of the new APIs used by Windows Vista.

3. I've uninstalled the .NET Framework 1.1 from most of my computers and have had no problems. The programs that need an older version of the .NET Framework should work just fine using version 2.0. If not, it's easy enough to reinstall.

 

[Aluvus]

Originally posted by: Brazen
Yeah, it's an application framework and not really having anything to do with being on a network. You can recognize a potential .NET application by it being slow and buggy, usually even worse than java applications.

Paint.NET is rather nice actually. Imperfect, but nice.

 

[Ken90630]

Thanks again, guys. Well, I uninstalled 1.0 and left 2.0 intact. We'll see how things go.
Like you say, Digobick, I can always re-install it.

 

[lxskllr]

Originally posted by: Aluvus

Originally posted by: Brazen
Yeah, it's an application framework and not really having anything to do with being on a network. You can recognize a potential .NET application by it being slow and buggy, usually even worse than java applications.

Paint.NET is rather nice actually. Imperfect, but nice.

Ditto on Paint.NET. I don't really do much picture editing, but I like the simple interface it has to play around with images.

 

[Mark R]

The .NET frameworks are sort of backwards compatible. As said before, it's a programming framework that makes it simple to develop programs for windows. If a program was designed to use it, then you'll need the framework to use that program.

If you've got .NET framework 2.0 then it should run all .NET 1.0 and .NET 1.1 applications. However, there are a (very) few things which don't work quite the same and some programs might not run, or might malfunction or crash.

If you've got .NET 2.0 and .NET 1.1 installed, then .NET 1 programs will use the 1.1 framework instead of the 2.0 framework, so should work correctly.

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: Aluvus
.NET is a framework for applications. It isn't especially related to networking (much less the .net top-level domain), even though the name implies as much.

Leave it be. It's useful. Removing it won't make your computer burst into flames, but will prevent you from running some applications.

Yeah man, last time I set up a windows machine I forgot to install the .com framework. Boy was that a hassle 😛

 

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: Brazen
Yeah, it's an application framework and not really having anything to do with being on a network. You can recognize a potential .NET application by it being slow and buggy, usually even worse than java applications.

Interesting comment. None of the .net stuff I've dealt with/written seem to suffer from being slow, or buggy. Of course that's another story.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: lxskllr

Originally posted by: Aluvus

Originally posted by: Brazen
Yeah, it's an application framework and not really having anything to do with being on a network. You can recognize a potential .NET application by it being slow and buggy, usually even worse than java applications.

Paint.NET is rather nice actually. Imperfect, but nice.

Ditto on Paint.NET. I don't really do much picture editing, but I like the simple interface it has to play around with images.

Ok, yeah I have heard good things about Paint.NET and Beagle works with no problems.

Originally posted by: SunnyD

Interesting comment. None of the .net stuff I've dealt with/written seem to suffer from being slow, or buggy. Of course that's another story.

Though I don't have any examples of buggy stuff, by design .NET applications will be slow. It's just a sympton of using an interpretted language and java suffers from the same thing. However, Python blows both of them away (also an interpretted language) and the speed difference between any of them, even Python, and a compiled language, such as C, is rediculous. It's like comparing a pinto to a corvette.

 

[Mark R]

Originally posted by: Brazen

Though I don't have any examples of buggy stuff, by design .NET applications will be slow. It's just a sympton of using an interpretted language and java suffers from the same thing. However, Python blows both of them away (also an interpretted language) and the speed difference between any of them, even Python, and a compiled language, such as C, is rediculous. It's like comparing a pinto to a corvette.

I suppose it depends on what you're doing, but I've done some basic signal processing and analysis in C#, and I benched it against the original C++ that I ported it from. I'd originally planned to make a wrapper, so that the C#.NET would use a C++ dll, but the difference in performance was about 5% - so small that I didn't bother.

 

[Kilrsat]

Originally posted by: Brazen

Though I don't have any examples of buggy stuff, by design .NET applications will be slow. It's just a sympton of using an interpretted language and java suffers from the same thing. However, Python blows both of them away (also an interpretted language) and the speed difference between any of them, even Python, and a compiled language, such as C, is rediculous. It's like comparing a pinto to a corvette.

Except you're completely talking out of your ass. .NET applications aren't interpretted. There's a JIT compiler that runs prior to any of the code being executed that turns MSIL into native code. Only the native code is ever executed. Modern java runtimes do something similar, although most of them don't compile everything in advance. Instead they choose to profile the running application and then compile only the parts necessary with optimizations specific for the runtime environment.

Anyway, you're also wrong that any of these are guaranteed to be slower than traditional C, as there are benchmarks out there which show both C# and Java beating C in some situations. Kind of funny for a pinto, right?

 

[corkyg]

It also has some Internet functions. When you are on the Internet, you are on a network.

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: Kilrsat

Originally posted by: Brazen

Though I don't have any examples of buggy stuff, by design .NET applications will be slow. It's just a sympton of using an interpretted language and java suffers from the same thing. However, Python blows both of them away (also an interpretted language) and the speed difference between any of them, even Python, and a compiled language, such as C, is rediculous. It's like comparing a pinto to a corvette.

Except you're completely talking out of your ass....

That's more or less what I was going to point out 😛

 

[Brazen]

obligatory link, though I was going from subjective experiences: http://furryland.org/~mikec/bench/

Google for "java python c performance" and just glancing through it looks like they all attest the rediculous speed advantage of C over anything else, although it looks like I had Python backwards. Python appears to be far, far, far far far behind everything else in benchmarks (maybe my impressions is just due to the fact that python programs are old school veteran programmers instead of h@xx0r java kiddies).

...and MSIL and JIT are just speed hacks onto an interpretted language.

 

[doornail]

I love Python.
Python makes me happy.
Everytime I face a problem, there is a part of my mind that selfishly wants to push a Python solution.
Python is the only language I've worked with where you can crank out a couple dozen lines of code and have it work first try, even the stuff you guessed about.
I feel bad for people that have to code in not-Python.

However, Python is slower than .NET. You have intrepreted bytecode passing to functions written in C (or more interpreted bytecode written in Python), which pass results back again. Values often have to be cast from native Python types to C types (and back again). There's a LOT of expensive stack usage in that scenario.

But for many tasks, it's fast enough(tm) though. I believe the original Bit Torrent was written in Python.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: doornail
I love Python.
Python makes me happy.
Everytime I face a problem, there is a part of my mind that selfishly wants to push a Python solution.
Python is the only language I've worked with where you can crank out a couple dozen lines of code and have it work first try, even the stuff you guessed about.
I feel bad for people that have to code in not-Python.

However, Python is slower than .NET. You have intrepreted bytecode passing to functions written in C (or more interpreted bytecode written in Python), which pass results back again. Values often have to be cast from native Python types to C types (and back again). There's a LOT of expensive stack usage in that scenario.

But for many tasks, it's fast enough(tm) though. I believe the original Bit Torrent was written in Python.

Yeah, it's amazing how even the simplest little C programs NEVER compile the first time. If anything there is at least a comma or paranthesis I left out somewhere. I'm learning Ruby now though. It's nice.

 

[corkyg]

What does all this extraneous BS have to do with the question: Is the .NET framework necessary if not on a network?

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: corkyg
What does all this extraneous BS have to do with the question: Is the .NET framework necessary if not on a network?

Nothing. Welcome to the forums.

 

[corkyg]

Originally posted by: Brazen
[

Nothing. Welcome to the forums.[/quote]

Right! I lost my head. What you say is true - especially the hardware forum. 🙂