Tag Archives: Visual Studio Community

Xamarin is now included for free in Visual Studio

Starting April of 2016, Visual Studio now includes Xamarin for free. This is the case for every edition of Visual Studio, including Visual Studio Community Edition, which is free as well.

With Xamarin you can develop and publish native apps for iOS and Android using C# or F# from directly within Visual Studio with no limits on app size.

For developers that are using Mac, Xamarin Studio is now available as a benefit of your Visual Studio Professional or Enterprise subscription. Developers can use the newly-created Xamarin Studio Community Edition for free.

You can visit Xamarin’s store to download Xamarin for free. Keep in mind that, Xamarin, although free, is license restricted for bigger companies. If you want to use Xamarin you will need to comply to one of the following license terms:

  • Individual license – If you are an individual working on your own applications to sell or for any other purpose, you may use the software to develop and test those applications.
  • Organization licenses – If you are an organization, your users may use the software as follows:
    • Any number of your users may use the software to develop and test your applications released under Open Source Initiative (OSI) approved open source software licenses.
    • Any number of your users may use the software to develop and test extensions to Visual Studio.
    • Any number of your users may use the software to develop and test your applications as part of online or in person classroom training and education, or for performing academic research.
    • If none of the above apply, and you are also not an enterprise (defined below), then up to 5 of your individual users can use the software concurrently to develop and test your applications.
    • If you are an enterprise, your employees and contractors may not use the software to develop or test your applications, except for open source and education purposes as permitted above. An enterprise is any organization and its affiliates who collectively have either (a) more than 250 PCs or users or (b) more than one million US dollars (or the equivalent in other currencies) in annual revenues, and enterprise means those entities that control (via majority ownership), are controlled by, or are under common control with an organization.
  • Demo use – The uses permitted above include use of the software in demonstrating your applications.

Microsoft releases Visual Studio Community 2013

Microsoft has released a new version of Visual Studio 2013 that goes by the name of Visual Studio Community 2013.

What is this you may ask? Simply put, Visual Studio Community edition is a free, full-featured development environment designed for open source contributors, students, small companies, start-ups and individual developers.

Visual Studio Community 2013 offers the same of features that can be found in the professional version including the ability to install extensions.

Any individual developer can use the Visual Studio Community edition to create free or commercial apps. As for organizations, if you are a non-enterprise organization, up to 5 of your developers can use the Community edition. Otherwise, for enterprise organizations, you are prohibited from using this version except in cases where your project is an open source project or has to do with academic research and classroom learning.

Visual Studio Community 2013 comes with update 4 build in and can be downloaded at Visual Studio Community 2013 Offline Installer (.ISO / English)

If you are interested in more details or you wish to download a different language of the product, visit Visual Studio’s download page

Supported Operation Systems for Visual Studio Community 2013

  • Windows 8.1 (x86 and x64)
  • Windows 8 (x86 and x64)
  • Windows 7 SP1 (x86 and x64)
  • Windows Server 2012 R2 (x64)
  • Windows Server 2012 (x64)
  • Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 (x64)

Recommended System Requirements

  • 1.6 GHz or faster processor
  • 1 GB of RAM (1.5 GB if running on a virtual machine)
  • 20 GB of available hard disk space
  • 5400 RPM hard disk drive
  • DirectX 9-capable video card that runs at 1024 x 768 or higher display resolution