Discussion
MAUI Avalonia Preview 1
soumyaskartha: Microsoft adding Linux support for yet another framework nobody asked for while WinForms still exists in 2026 is very on brand.
Ciantic: I wish they support Linux wholeheartedly, a lot of toolkits and GUI frameworks do it by half-assing things, mostly because Wayland is difficult to understand.In Wayland you have multiple ways to render windows, not just the XDG top level window. It works via surfaces, and here is a list I've discovered so far: - XDG Top Level Window - Child Window - Popup Surface - Layer surface (like task-bars, shell overlays) - Subsurface (region in another surface) - IME Panel Surface (surface that follows text cursor) There probably is others too.It is diffifcult to find high-level toolkits that support all of the above.
tonyedwardspz: Excited for this. I do wonder how much effort it will be to get an existing app working with this.
louhike: Avalonia is not made by Microsoft and is often considered as one of the best way to make desktop app with .NET.
Pay08: I can understand the confusion, Microsoft also has a framework called MAUI.
general1465: What is unclear to me, is how does it work with Avalonia pricing wise? If I am having commercial application for Windows, Android, MacOS, iOS (Microsoft MAUI range) then according to [1] I would need to dish out 125000 EUR per application. But it was never clear to me what are the conditions which actually triggers the difference between free and paid plan.[1] https://avaloniaui.net/xpf/pricing
politelemon: I like the possibilities this opens up but I'm struggling to understand how wasm is involved. I had the impression it doesn't have a user interface, but it's called by javascript instead.
exceptione: [delayed]
blendergeek: Just a reminder that this MAUI has nothing to do with the pre-existing cross platform UI framework MauiKit from MAUI Project.https://mauikit.org/
exceptione: From a quick look, I can't find a reason. why? Even MS doesn't fully believe in Maui, as it seems they reblessed WPF. For Avalonia to do the work of MS seems weird, their own free regular WPF-like Avalonia UI toolkit is already the standard for cross desktop development.I was looking for the line: Microsoft sponsored us. Even then I would not understand why they would spend effort on a doomed project. I know Avalonia being a small company has a big task ahead of porting Avalonia UI to Wayland, which makes porting MS semi-abandonware all the more confusing.But since these people aren't idiots, I gladly assume I am missing something.
robin_reala: Accessibility bridging between .NET MAUI and Avalonia is currently limited.Nowhere near production ready, got it.
oblio: How mature is Avalonia for an universal app? Big 3 desktop plus big 2 mobile?
Pay08: Not to mention that there's no clear documentation for this anywhere. A while ago I was attempting to debug some Wayland-specific issues with a graphics library, it turns out the issue was that the little documentation there was, was wrong about what is and isn't nullable.
OtomotO: I found https://wayland.app/protocols/ very helpful so far.That and studying smithay code.
