Compatibility he IL

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ASF is a C# application that is running on .NET Core platform. This means that ASF is not compiled directly into machine code that is running on your CPU, but into CIL that requires a CIL-compatible runtime for executing it.

This approach has gigantic amount of advantages, as CIL is platform-independent, which is why ASF can run natively on many available OSes, especially Windows, Linux and OS X. There is not only no emulation needed, but also support for all platform-related and hardware-related optimizations, such as CPU SSE instructions. Thanks to that, ASF can achieve superior performance and optimization, while still offering a perfect compatibility and reliability.

This also means that ASF has no specific OS requirement, because it requires working runtime on that OS and not OS itself. As long as that runtime is executing ASF code properly, it does not matter whether underlying OS is Windows, Linux, OS X, BSD, Sony Playstation 4, Nintendo Wii or your toaster - as long as there is .NET Core for it, there is ASF for it.

However, regardless of where you run ASF, you must ensure that your target platform has .NET Core prerequisites installed. Those are low-level libraries required for proper runtime functionality and absolutely core for ASF to work in the first place. Very likely you can have some of them (or even all) already installed.

ASF packaging

ASF comes in 2 main flavours - generic package and OS-specific. Functionality-wise both packages are exactly the same, they're both also capable of automatically updating themselves. The only difference between them is whether or not ASF generic package also comes with OS-specific runtime to power it.

Generic

Generic package is platform-agnostic build that doesn't include any machine-specific code. This setup requires from you to have .NET Core runtime already installed on your OS in appropriate version. We all know how troublesome it is to keep dependencies up-to-date, therefore this package is here mainly for people that already use .NET Core and don't want to duplicate their runtime solely for ASF if they can make use of what they have installed already. Generic package also allows you to run ASF anywhere where you can obtain working implementation of .NET Core runtime, regardless if there exists OS-specific ASF build for it, or not.

It's not recommended to use generic flavour if you're casual or even advanced user that just wants to make ASF work and not dig into .NET Core technical details. In other words - if you know what this is, you can use it, otherwise it's much better to use OS-specific package explained below.

.NET Framework package

In addition to generic package mentioned above, there is also generic-netf package which is built on top of .NET Framework (and not .NET Core). This package is a legacy variant that provides missing compatibility known from ASF V2 times, and can be run e.g. with Mono, while .NET Core generic package can't as of today.

In general you should avoid this package as much as possible, as majority of operating systems and setups are perfectly (and much better) supported with generic package mentioned above. In fact, this package makes sense to be used only on platforms that lack working .NET Core runtime, while having working Mono implementation. An example of such platform would be linux-x86 that didn't receive working .NET Core runtime as of today.

As the time goes on with more platforms being supported by .NET Core and less compatibility between .NET Framework and .NET Core, generic-netf package will be entirely replaced with generic one in the future. Please refrain from using it if you can use any .NET Core package instead, as generic-netf is missing a lot of functionality and compatibility compared to .NET Core versions, and it'll be only less functional as the time goes on. We offer support for this package only on machines that can't use generic variant above (e.g. linux-x86), and only with up-to-date runtime (e.g. latest Mono).

OS-specific

OS-specific package, apart from managed code included in generic package, also includes native code for given platform. In other words, OS-specific package already includes proper .NET Core runtime inside, which allows you to entirely skip the whole installation mess and just launch ASF directly. OS-specific package, as you can guess from the name, is OS-specific and every OS requires its own version - for example Windows requires PE32+ ArchiSteamFarm.exe binary while Linux works with Unix ELF ArchiSteamFarm binary. As you may know, those two types are not compatible with each other.

ASF is currently available in following OS-specific variants:

win-x64 works on 64-bit Windows OSes. This includes Windows 7 (SP1+), 8.1, 10, Server 2008 R2 (SP1+), 2012, 2012 R2, 2016, as well as future versions.
linux-arm works on 32-bit ARM-based (ARMv7+) GNU/Linux OSes. This includes especially Raspberry Pi 2 & 3 with all GNU/Linux OSes available for them (such as Raspbian), in current and future versions. This variant will not work with older ARM architectures, such as ARMv6 found in Raspberry Pi 0 & 1, it will also not work with OSes that do not implement required GNU/Linux environment, such as Android.
linux-x64 works on 64-bit GNU/Linux OSes. This includes Alpine, CentOS/Fedora/RHEL, Debian/Ubuntu/Linux Mint, OpenSUSE/SLES and many other ones, including their derivatives, in current and future versions.
osx-x64 works on 64-bit OS X OSes. This includes 10.13, as well as future versions.

Of course, even if you don't have OS-specific package available for your OS-architecture combination, you can always install appropriate .NET Core runtime yourself and run generic ASF flavour, which is also the main reason why it exists in the first place. Generic ASF build is platform-agnostic and will run on any platform that has a working .NET Core runtime. This is important to note - ASF requires .NET Core runtime, not some specific OS or architecture. For example, if you're running 32-bit Windows then despite of no dedicated win-x86 ASF version, you can still install .NET Core SDK in win-x86 version and run generic ASF just fine. We simply can't target every OS-architecture combination that exists and is used by somebody, so we have to draw a line somewhere. x86 is a good example of that line, as it's obsolete architecture since at least 2004.

For a complete list of all supported platforms and OSes by .NET Core 3.0, visit release notes.

Runtime requirements

If you're using OS-specific package then you don't need to worry about runtime requirements, because ASF always ships with required and up-to-date runtime that will work properly as long as you have .NET Core prerequisites installed and up-to-date. In other words, you don't need to install .NET Core runtime or SDK, as OS-specific builds require only native OS dependencies (prerequisites) and nothing else.

However, if you're trying to run generic ASF package then you must ensure that your .NET Core runtime supports platform required by ASF.

ASF as a program is targeting .NET Core 3.0 (netcoreapp3.0) right now, but it may target newer platform in the future. netcoreapp3.0 is supported since 3.0.100 SDK (3.0.0 runtime), although ASF is configured to target latest runtime at the moment of compilation, so you should ensure that you have latest SDK (or at least runtime) available for your machine. Generic ASF variant may refuse to launch if your runtime is older than the minimum (target) one known during compilation.

If in doubt, check what our continuous integration uses for compiling and deploying ASF releases on GitHub. You can find dotnet --info output on top of each build.

Issues

Various lock-related issues running ASF on Linux VPS with OpenVZ virtualization

OpenVZ kernel is usually based on a very old Linux kernel version (2.6) which seems incompatible with latest .NET Core runtime. If you're trying to run ASF in such environment, you may encounter various lock-related issues, usually in form of process freeze. See related CoreCLR issue: https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/issues/26873

Our recommendation is to ditch OpenVZ in favour of much better virtualization solutions, such as KVM. The issue described here is indeed a .NET Core runtime bug that is supposed to be dealt with eventually, but with no indication of the actual timeframe. If you're unable to move to better virtualization solutions, you can consider running generic-netf ASF variant with mono.