- The 2.0 Redistributable Package can be downloaded for free from Microsoft, and was published on 22 January 2006.
- The 2.0 Software Development Kit (SDK) can be downloaded for free from Microsoft.
- It is included as part of Visual Studio 2005 and Microsoft SQL Server 2005.
- Version 2.0 without any Service Pack is the last version with support for Windows 98 and Windows Me. Version 2.0 with Service Pack 2 is the last version with official support for Windows 2000 although there have been some unofficial workarounds published online to use a subset of the functionality from Version 3.5 in Windows 2000. Version 2.0 with Service Pack 2 requires Windows 2000 with SP4 plus KB835732 or KB891861 update, Windows XP with SP2 or later and Windows Installer 3.1 (KB893803-v2)
- It shipped with Windows Server 2003 R2 (not installed by default).
Changes in 2.0 in comparison with 1.1
- Generics
- Language support for generics built directly into the .NET CLR.
- Full 64-bit support for both the x64 and the IA-64 hardware platforms.
- Numerous API changes.
- SQL Server integration – .NET 2.0, VS 2005, and SQL Server 2005 are all tied together. This means that instead of using T-SQL, one can build stored procedures and triggers in any of the .NET-compatible languages.
- A new hosting API for native applications wishing to host an instance of the .NET runtime. The new API gives a fine grain control on the behavior of the runtime with regards to multithreading, memory allocation, assembly loading and more (detailed reference). It was initially developed to efficiently host the runtime in Microsoft SQL Server, which implements its own scheduler and memory manager.
- Many additional and improved ASP.NET web controls.
- New data controls with declarative data binding.
- New personalization features for ASP.NET, such as support for themes, skins, master pages and webparts.
- .NET Micro Framework – a version of the .NET Framework related to the Smart Personal Objects Technology initiative.
- Membership provider
- Partial classes
- Nullable types
- Anonymous methods
- Iterators
- Data tables
