As the title says, you probably guessed it already. For work I mainly develop on the .NET platform using a Windows device, but at home I enjoy all the benefits of a good OS.

Now I kinda want to get my C# skills “sharper” and have some projects in mind utilising it, but I’m a bit miffed about the development tools and possibilities of deployment available for me on Linux.

Also I may want to coerce my boss to let me work on a device with my OS of choice.

Any advice from devs that are in a similar spot? What do you use for .NET development on Linux? And are there any cool multiplatform deployment possibilities (next to Xamarin/Maui) that actually let me build natively on Linux?

  • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl
    9·
    8 months ago

    I only dabble in C# these days, mostly because Microsoft doesn’t bother porting .NET Forms to Linux, but my most recent GUI framework experiments were with Avalonia and that felt quite good. Not everything works as well on Linux (no Fluent design background blur, though I believe it does work on Windows and macOS) but functionality-wise, it’s pretty complete.

    My IDE of choice is Rider, and the Avalonia plugin has some nice previewing features and a good chunk of XML/C# binding autocomplete.

    There’s a paid option for Avalonia that will take your WPF application and instantly turn it into a cross-platform app, but that’s clearly focused on enterprise users (starting cost: $5k per app per platform for startups, four times that for “enterprises”, lol). I can’t blame them, though, because porting WPF to macOS + Linux + iOS + Android + web browsers + Tizen + (eventually) VisionOS by simply swapping out the SDK is pretty amazing tech.