Which versions of .NET have been released so far?

The final version of the .NET 1.0 SDK & runtime were made publically available on 15 - Jan -2002. At the same time, the final version of Visual Studio.NET was made available to MSDN subscribers.

.NET 1.1 was released in April 2003, with bugs fixed. Visual Studio 2003 supports development of applications in version 1.1.

.NET 2.0 was launched in October 2005 for MSDN subscribers, and officially released in Nov 2005.

On - Jun - 2006, .NET 3.0 was launched. This version was earlier called WinFX. Visual Studio 2005 supports development of .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.0 applications. .NET 3 is comprised of the following:

Windows Communication Foundation
Windows Presentation Foundation
Windows Workflow Foundation
Windows Cardspace

The next version of Visual Studio, code named Orcas, Beta 1 has been released as a Beta Version. The .NET Framework 3.5 Beta is also available as a download.