Installing .NET Core 2

We're using Ubuntu Server 16.04 LTS in this guide, but these instructions will work on other versions too. Using Advanced Package Tool (APT), we can install .NET Core very easily, but first we will need to add a custom feed as .NET Core is not in the default repository.

First we need to add the .NET Core package source to the list used by APT. The package source is on Azure, so we write this URL (plus some other info) to a file in the folder of sources used by apt-get. We do this by redirecting the standard output of echo to it, using the following command:

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://apt-mo.trafficmanager.net/repos/dotnet-release/ xenial main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/dotnetdev.list'

All packages are signed with public key cryptography to verify their integrity (read the later chapters for more on this). We import the public key for the .NET Core packages from the Ubuntu key server with the apt-key command:

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys 417A0893

We need to update our sources so that the latest changes can be picked up with this simple command:

sudo apt-get update

Now we are in a position to install .NET Core with the following command:

sudo apt-get install dotnet-sdk-2.0.0

If the SDK package ever makes it to the default list of sources, then this will be all you need to do.

After a wall of text scrolls, assuming you don't get any errors and you see the telemetry notice, you're ready to go. Type dotnet to see the usage information and dotnet --version to see the current version that you are running.