Here's a summary of what's new for .NET container images in this Preview 2 release:
.NET 11 Preview 2 SDK container images are significantly smaller than Preview 1. This size reduction is a result of eliminating duplicate files within the SDK using filesystem hard links. The result is a compressed (wire) size reduction of approximately 44 MB for all .NET SDK container images.
| OS | Arch | Preview 1 (MB) | Preview 2 (MB) | Diff (MB) | Diff (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alpine 3.23 | amd64 | 274.2 | 230.3 | -43.9 | -16.0% |
| Alpine 3.23 | arm64 | 250.4 | 207.5 | -42.9 | -17.1% |
| Azure Linux 3.0 | amd64 | 337.2 | 293.3 | -44.0 | -13.0% |
| Azure Linux 3.0 | arm64 | 328.3 | 285.2 | -43.1 | -13.1% |
| Ubuntu 26.04 | amd64 | 331.0 | 288.9 | -42.1 | -12.7% |
| Ubuntu 26.04 | arm64 | 323.4 | 282.0 | -41.4 | -12.8% |
This size reduction also applies to standalone .NET SDK archives and installers.