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Comment by chrsw | Hacker News Reader

Can one .NET GUI application look and feel native on Windows and Linux?

Yes, but the portable GUI frameworks by Microsoft themselves are generally not very good, and they tend to be abandoned after a couple of years.

Avalonia is developed outside of the Microsoft corporate madness and seems to be slowly becoming the defacto cross-platform framework because it is expected to last a bit longer than a manager's attention span: https://avaloniaui.net/

That's rich considering that many of the new Windows apps shipped out of the box with Windows 11 are web based and use some sort of Edge based Electron-like container.

I think that corroborates that GUI development on .net is a mess and the only common framework out there that can solve the “do it once on all the things” is Avalonia.

Web-based electron apps are not .net apps and that’s what we are talking about here.

Most new Microsoft apps are actual web apps that run a browser and then on the desktop they're just the same app in an Edge-Electron-like container.

How does what you're talking about suggest the parent comment is "rich?"

I'm saying Microsoft's actions are rich, not his comment.

Relying on Microsoft for UI is like relying on the Smithsonian to DJ your party.

They do a great job. Just...not at that.

Depends on what GUI library you're using, same as every other programming environment. There's GTK Sharp for C#.

I'm not sure I consider any apps on either to look native at this point.

I'd rather just have a, Material or Fluent UI in either , the latter being current windows design style.

They've both changed so much over time along with a mix of applications applying different design styles all around.

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