Is LINQ the primary query method of Entity Framework?

Question

I'm just starting with Entity Framework and there's a thing I don't understand:

They say LINQ to SQL is being discontinued. But Entity Framework is being activelly developed and recently they released version 4.0. As far as I know, LINQ is the default method of expressing queries in Entity Framework. How come? What are they gonna do? The EntityFramework will use another query method other than LINQ? How does this work?

Answer 1

LINQ is here to stay.

Entity Framework uses LINQ to do its querying.

"LINQ to SQL" is a very specific piece of technology that is used to connect to an SQL Server database, and map LINQ commands into SQL commands.

"LINQ to Entities" is the name for the LINQ provider for Entity Framework, and is analogous to LINQ to SQL.