Merge pull request #16 from dotnet/blackdwarf-patch-1

Add overview of .NET Editions

docs/getting-started/overview.rst

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+Overview of .NET implementations
+================================
+
+.NET Platform is, at its very core, a set of standards that can be implemented. There are 
+various implementations, some coming from Microsoft, some coming from other companies and 
+groups. 
+
+.NET Core
+---------
+.NET Core is a cloud-optimized, cross-platform implementation of the .NET Platform. It currently 
+supports three main operating systems: Linux, Windows and OS X. 
+
+There are several characteristics of .NET Core:
+
+**Cross-platform support** is the first important feature. For applications, it 
+is important to use those platforms that will provide the best environment for 
+their execution. Thus, having an application platform that can enable the app 
+to be ran on different operating systems with minimal or no changes provides a 
+significant boon. 
+
+**Open Source** because it is proven to be a great way to enable a larger set of 
+platforms, supported by community contribution.
+
+**Better packaging story** - the framework is distributed as a set of packages 
+that developers can pick and choose from, rather than a single, 
+monolithic platform. .NET Core is the first implementation of .NET Platform that is 
+distributed via `NuGet <http://www.nuget.org/>`_ package manager. 
+
+**Better application isolation** as one of the scenarios for .NET Core is to 
+enable applications to "take" the needed runtime for their execution and deploy 
+it with the application, not depending on shared components on the targeted 
+machine. This plays well with the current trends of developing software 
+and using container technologies like Docker for consolidation. 
+
+.NET Framework
+--------------
+
+The .NET Framework is the premier implementation of the .NET Platform available for 
+Windows server and client developers. It is a very powerful, very mature framework, with 
+a huge class library (known as the **Framework Class Libraries**) that supports 
+a wide variety of applications and solutions on Windows. 
+
+There are additional stacks built on top the .NET Framework that allow developers 
+to build applications ranging from console applications, across rich client (WPF) 
+applications to scalable web applications. 
+
+`Windows Forms <https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd30h2yb(v=vs.110).aspx>`_ 
+and `Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) <https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms754130(v=vs.110).aspx>`_ 
+are User Interface (UI) stacks that enable you to build desktop applications for Windows.
+Windows Forms' strength is in its rich support for common databinding scenarios as well as 
+access to Windows' native user interface controls. WPF, on the other hand, allows you to exercise 
+much more control over the look and feel of your application. Both of them allow for building very 
+rich desktop applications that run on Windows, and you should pick the one that is suited for your 
+use case. 
+
+`Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) <https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms731082(v=vs.110).aspx>`_ 
+is a set of libraries that comprise the middleware services stack on .NET Framework. 
+It allows you to create services that can communicate through various supported 
+protocols using various data formats, and that can be hosted in any process 
+you choose. This leads to one of the major features of WCF: your services are 
+not tied to any particular hosting strategy or approach.
+
+`ASP.NET <http://www.asp.net/>`_ is a web framework. Being a very rich framework, 
+it has several distinct pieces which are used to produce modern and high-performance 
+web applications. `ASP.NET Web Forms <http://www.asp.net/web-forms>`_ is a set 
+of tools geared primarily towards developer productivity, allowing quick 
+turnaround on web applications with a drag-and-drop surface 
+reusing web controls for everything from loging in to data binding. 
+`ASP.NET MVC <http://www.asp.net/mvc>`_ allows for a different approach, one that gives you greater 
+control over the entire pipeline, from the HTTP layer to the user interface. 
+`ASP.NET WebAPI <http://www.asp.net/web-api>`_ is a convention-based framework for creating REST 
+services. It allows you to set-up a REST endpoint extremely fast. Finally, 
+`SignalR <http://www.asp.net/signalr>`_ allows you to provide push-based communication to your web 
+applications using `WebSocket <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebSocket>`_ protocol. 
+Finally, `ASP.NET v5 <http://www.asp.net/vnext/>`_ is a new version of MVC and 
+WebAPI frameworks that is built to run on top of .NET Core.
+
+.NET Native
+-----------
+
+.NET Native is not so much an "edition" of the .NET platform as it is a set of tools that 
+allow developers to have different build outputs. The normal .NET source compilation process takes 
+the source code written in one of the .NET languages (such as C#, Visual Basic, F# etc.) and 
+produces something called "Intermediate Language". IL is then picked up by the runtime, 
+and Just-In-Time compiled at run-time to machine code. 
+
+.NET Native NET Native is an Ahead-of-Time (AOT) toolchain that compiles IL 
+byte code to native machine code, so that when the code is executed, there is 
+only "native" code running. This means that the resulting binary is what the OS executes; 
+there is no JIT-ing, no runtime compilation. This leads to better performance, as well as 
+some security benefits. 
+
+.NET Native is the set of tools used to build .NET **Universal Windows Platform (UWP)** 
+applications. 
+
+Supported operating systems
+---------------------------
+
+.NET Core is supported on Windows, Linux and OS X. 
+
+.NET Framework is supported on Windows operating system. .NET Native is, 
+at this time, supported on Windows. 
+
+
+
+
 
-|stub-icon| Overview of different editions of .NET
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