MAUI Is Coming to Linux

Summary

Alongside Avalonia 12 and the .NET 11 Previews, I am pleased to announce the first preview of our Avalonia backend for .NET MAUI. Now, you can leverage Avalonia to deploy .NET MAUI apps to new platforms, like Linux and WebAssembly.Since last fall, we’ve made great strides in bringing the power of Avalonia to .NET MAUI.Beyond offering Linux and WebAssembly support for .NET MAUI, this new backend advances Avalonia’s vision of cross-platform consistency. There are many great reasons to choose between native and drawn UIs. Going native allows your app to blend in with your hosted platform. But there are times when you don’t want Liquid Glass and prefer a classic look. We want these apps to look and feel the same, regardless of the platforms you choose. Get started in four stepsEager to get started right away? Here’s how:Create a .NET MAUI app.Add the Avalonia.Controls.Maui.Desktop NuGet.Add the net11.0 target framework.Add UseAvaloniaApp to your MauiBuilder.That’s it. Run the net11.0 target, and your app will launch. No need to create an Avalonia bootstrapper; we've already done that for you. Of course, you can extend or disable our source generator if you want full control on the Avalonia side. We’ve provided examples of each approach in the repository to help you.Improving Avalonia for everyoneFor us, this project was a great opportunity to introduce improvements to Avalonia itself. We wanted to close the gap between the control set available in .NET MAUI and Avalonia, to avoid needing to implement .NET MAUI-specific controls. One of the most obvious benefits of that work has been the creation of the new navigation APIs and controls we’re introducing with Avalonia 12. These, and countless other new features, are a direct result of our work supporting .NET MAUI. Anyone using Avalonia 12 gets the full benefits, and since these .NET MAUI handlers are built on Avalonia primitives, they can be fully customized through Avalonia APIs. And, thanks to Avalonia being entirely d...