I know this is a bit of a first-world problem but back in those days[tm] you just slapped 2-3 DLLs into the exe directory and it worked. Yes, I know there were also different versions for different runtimes, but overall it was a couple of DLLs and fine. Since .net you really need to install the distributable by MS, and every new .net upgrade it's the same. Just 2 days ago I apparently needed the .net 8 runtime and even after installing it the app in question didn't work (without a reboot maybe, I will find out later today).

Overall, strictly as a consumer, C# and .net apps have been mostly great, except the practice (is it a best practice?) that some of them end up somewhere in my home dir's Local dir and not in c:\program files.