Here's the deal: I'm in the process of planning a mid-sized business application that absolutely must support Win2k. AFAIK, official .NET support for Win2k was scrapped a while ago (IIRC, it stopped at version 2.0).
Now, I already wrote (ages ago) libraries in C++ that allow me to accomplish the end result (i.e., finish this project) just as quickly as if I was writing this application with the help of the .NET Framework -- so .NET's RAD "advantage" is almost negated.
I'm sure a lot of people here deal with business applications that need to support old OS's. So, given my library situation, what advantage(s) are there for me in using .NET over native C++ and vice versa? I'm just not sure which of the two is right for the job -- because it seems that I could use either. Then again, there's that framework support issue to deal with...
I will gladly add more information, if required.
The last .NET version that runs under Windows 2000 is .NET 2.0 SP2. It does include the features required by System.Core.dll (that is part of .NET 3.5).
The answer is YES, you can use .NET 3.5 SP1 under Windows 2000 if you're not going to use .NET 3.0 libraries (WCF, WF, WPF, CardSpace). But you have LINQ, LINQ to XML, LINQ to SQL.
The only thing you need to do is to deploy three core .NET 3.5 SP1 files:
Disadvantages of this method (read carefully):