Yes this would necessitate using Windows, an OS which I abhor, but as of now . In time I hope that will change with improvements in both JetBrains Ryder and Avalonia.
As for beginner - there's quite a bit of learning curve in terms of writing GUI applications themselves. Avalonia is kind of like WPF* but good(tm) and cross-platform. Uno platform is more like Xamarin and MAUI except in a better shape as of today. From technical perspective, Avalonia focuses on consistent rendering on all platforms with Skia while Uno tries to use native controls instead. I generally would not advise using Avalonia for mobile over Uno. In mobile case you might actually want to also give MAUI a try as, despite harsh criticism it has been receiving, it has improved significantly.
* either platform supports various declarative UI libraries (that are either part of their ecosystem or community-maintained), so you are not married to XAML thankfully.