Linux support in .NET MAUI #31
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Thank you very much for considering Linux support on .NET MAUI. It's something that many of us have been asking for for a long time. My humble opinion is to use the option where Linux support is available as soon as possible. Later, in successive versions of .NET MAUI, other options could be evaluated. |
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In order to consider MAUI as our UI framework, it is very important to us to be able to reach customers that work with Linux (such as many public organizations, etc). We would mainly use it for our Desktop version of the product. Thank you for opening this path for Linux support. |
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For me the target platforms I would use would be mostly personal or small apps for Raspberry PI or ChromeOS. As for desktop apps I would use it for Ubuntu mainly for a full blown OS. On a side note what would there be any sort of WSL support. I know there aren't any UI specific supported apps for WSL currently, but WSL is a Linux platform. Having something that is cross platform for WSL would be nice and work well for a developer that is using windows to developer for cross compile and test on WSL. Currently I use Electron for cross compile app that need to be desktop bound. There are some limitations when it comes to USB support and some hardware issues I have run into. Mainly Electron uses libusb which is for Linux only and still working on a way to have true cross platform support. |
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I think the fastest way to a good solution is to use GTK3 https://github.com/GtkSharp/GtkSharp. This project is what ETO.Forms uses, which I have used to target linux in the past. It seems like they have plans to support GTK4 GtkSharp/GtkSharp#166 So contributing to that effort going forward would be the most productive way to get to GTK4 support in the future. |
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Avalonia is the most solid implementation of a xaml-backed GUI running on Linux today. I'd look there for inspiration. |
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Avalonia manually draws it's controls using skia. This doesn't fit with the ethos of Xamarin.Forms/Maui which is to use native controls on each platform. This gives you a more native look and feel. Maui currently doesn't have a Skia backend, so using SkiaSharp to do drawing would be quite an extensive exercise, all the controls would have to be drawn from the ground up using primitives. |
But see the great work being pursued in the linked projects https://github.com/dotnet/GraphicsControls (which depends on https://github.com/dotnet/System.Graphics). Extensive exercise yes, but actually extremely efficient since it's done once for all platforms, and would therefore benefit from combined effort, usage, and contributions. Even without linux many people are going to want to use this library as soon as it's ready, since the demand for platform-independent rendering is much greater than the demand for platform-specific rendering. Then linux comes for free. |
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Linux is an important platform among our customers, we believe that including MAUI support for Linux would save a lot of time and effort in the development of cross-platform applications. |
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Our main target will be Raspbian. Running typically, on Raspberry Pi 4. |
Your company can hire a professional to only focus on that? Or sponsor an open-source maintainer? |
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I'm the lead developer on a bunch of stuff at my company that runs on multiple platforms. It's modeling & simulation that has resource-intensive native/local-desktop components. Several of the underlying simulations are command-line dotnetcore/.NET5, with a GUI harness around. I personally do 95% of my development on Linux, hopping to Windows and Mac mostly to debug platform-specific things that come up. I have users on all three platforms. For me, when looking at creating a new GUI, I need it to have a good Linux development path with deployment options to other OSs. Currently that usually ends up meaning Java. The GUI options drive architecture decisions; fully supported Linux+Win+Mac GUI in .NET would be a preferred option that opens lots of doors. Non-first-party support for my primary development platforms largely takes it off the table. I have a preference for things that "look native", but in this day and age, virtually nothing has a consistent "native" look or would even know what an HIG is. Truly clean integration with a decent 3d pipeline [eg an openGL panel] would help a lot but isn't a deal-breaker. To the question as posed: I don't know about implementation of the GUI framework; only that it should exist, perform adequately, and be receive reliable support+maintenance. Everything else is frosting. |
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I think GTK is favourable to target, preferrably GTK4 as it's right around the corner. Ubuntu and ChromeOS would be the two platforms I'd like to see things working on. I'll echo most of the sentiment from @chunky. If projects support packaging in any kind of way, Ubuntu Snaps would be a nice target to have. |
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@chunky As I've said, without allocating resources to make this happen, hardly this will become true. Companies like your have to invest in projects like this. |
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Linux does not have a native feel all the desktops "native" looks vary drastically. I think the two main ones would be KDE and GNOME if I had to guess, but there are a lot of other "native" ones out there. I think most likely you would see some form of interface that these UI can maybe share and wire in to use them. If Microsoft plans to support anything would guess it would need to be one of the mainstream first. I agree that if we need to choose one to start with GNOME/GTK would be the safest route to go. Microsoft already has relationships with Canonical/Ubuntu and GNOME is the default of a lot of distros. I think Redhat and a lot of enterprise distros also have GNOME as default. I believe and please someone correct me if I am wrong that KDE and other UIs can run GTK front end apps without the need for GNOME. I know a while back there was a bug or issue that GTK apps didn't render well in KDE. Not sure if that has been resolved or not, but something to consider that even though it may run in a non GNOME environment there could still be UI issues. I think this is the fundamental problem with supporting Linux in the first place. The only other option is Microsoft roll there own and have it skinned and do some kind of detection to try to match as best as possible, or let the developer configure for GNOME ,KDE, XFCE, MATE, Cinnamon you see the problem. |
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@knuxbbs It seems to be a possibility, otherwise this issue would not have been opened by @jsuarezruiz. There are some frameworks, like UNO that have worked for a while now in offering a way to work with the same technology addressing different platforms (including web). Performance was quite an issue when we tested this framework but I heard they have improved it since then. Hiring a specialist and mantaining several UI technologies is something we would like to avoid. |
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@lmartinedreira I thought this issue was more of a "call to action". Anyway, let's see what @jsuarezruiz has to say. |
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Thank you all for the feedback. For clarifying the expectations or doubts of what is the objective of this issue. In the launch, .NET MAUI will support iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS. Official Linux support could come, but it would be later. My initial objective is to gather information mainly about interest, use and if possible about the expected/desired technological stack. After gathering the information, I would be interested in doing a call to action to get help with some tests (Example: port current backend to GTK3/4, drawn controls etc). From the feedback received (here and elsewhere), there is interest in Linux. The use is varied between Desktop, Raspberry Pi, etc. I have some questions, but probably my main question is, would you want a native UI (using GTK Widgets) or, having a native container (GTK window) and drawn controls cover your needs? To consider, doing everything native using GTK 4 for example, requires creating the C# bindings libraries for GTK 4, testing the performance and functionality of the library well and then creating a backend, one Handler for each control. |
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GTK4 widgets would be my vote. That's by far the most harmonious. Maybe even better for performance and battery life? (would have to see side by side, but I'm just assuming at this point) |
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I recognise that Linux support in MAUI is very much a second-tier requirement. With that in mind, the idea of a widget layer that works on all platforms and happens to have a tiny shim to make it work on Linux is actually fairly compelling to me; it's less to support/break/etc. Presumably it also significantly smooths the complexity of a programmer-available drawing canvas because that comes as essentially a freebie. I could think of other benefits [custom theming is also accidentally free, albeit something I probably wouldn't use]. I have a preference for "proper" GTK widgetry for a bunch of reasons [integration, native L&F, accessibility, etc]. But if custom-drawn is the best way to get MAUI to have Linux support, then I wouldn't poo-poo it. [By way of example of integration woes: Many Linux desktops let you alt-right-click-drag to resize a window, and alt-left-click-drag to move a window. Many tools that bring their own widgetry don't support those shortcuts, and it's an absurdly painful paper cut every time]. |
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Use GTK4 as a container, but use drawn controls: https://github.com/dotnet/GraphicsControls |
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Using drawn controls would make linux the only Maui platform to not use native controls. |
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Who cares? Any concept of "native look and feel" on Linux is a charade anyway.
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Yes for Linux, but only in the context of supporting a Blazor PWA running native with however Mobile Blazor Bindings is folding into .Net 6. |
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My two cents: |
Just use GTK and drawn controls. |
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I don't think GTK toplevel with drawn controls makes sense. Neither does coupling anything to do with MAUI to blazor, which has its own life expectancy concerns. 😆 Native GTK4 makes the most sense. |
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If you do drawn controls, can you guarantee the following:
With GTK you are going to get these for free. With drawn controls and a community supported project, potentially only a few people working in there own time with no help from Microsoft. I don't think you can be sure these will happen. |
True. However, nearly any framework you put there will be a resource hog. If you stick with straightforward HTML (without overlaps over overlaps like google does with their products and Angular usually does) and <1MB (uncompressed) of CSS and <1MB (uncompressed) of JS (just as a principle to provide an objective value), then the performance should be manageable.
Those are the principles for fast, low power consumption web pages.
You have no idea how much longer a phone's battery can last just by running a C++ OS instead of running something heavy such as Android and their apps. I have because I've done tests on that. Think more like 1.7x longer. |
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Please use native linux controls.
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How is this not proof that "fragmentation" exists. The least used OS have arguably three mainstream and probably more UI front ends used. If this isn't fragmentation I do not know what is. This is exactly the reason MS wouldn't support because they can't just support one. @Shadowblitz16 how would you feel if MS only supported QT? If you had to choose one which would it be? Ultimately, I would rather see Microsoft have their own front end written from the ground up and have skins/styling to emulate these UIs. This would be the most future proof than just supporting one. With that said this also is a lot of work to do this for an OS that is arguably used less than the current ones supported. |
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@Shadowblitz16 Then expansion can proceed to other frameworks. @Shadowblitz16 There's more toolkits than just GTK and Qt. |
I would guess like 90% of distros out there use qt or gtk rendering backend. |
There is fragmentation but most distros support qt, gtk2 a gtk3 backends. |
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Here is a list of cross platform .NET gui tools with linux desktop support.
But please go ahead an tell me why supporting linux desktop is just to hard for Microsoft to do. Microsoft has more resources then all these put together by orders of magnitude. There are no technical problems preventing .NET Maui from being on linux. |
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Yep eto forms even uses native back ends for linux, mac and windows. I just would rather native rendering then uno or avalonia which use custom drawn controls. |
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You have entire companies dedicated to one single problem. No other company supports all the plumbing that is there. I think at this point dotnet may be the largest of frameworks out there. Java is larger with choice, but I am talking about what comes in the box that is provided by one single provider. So if you where to build an app using only MS packages vs Oracle only you would see MS supplies a lot more out of the box. This takes resources, so yes Microsoft has more resources, but they also have a lot higher burden. No single framework supports as much out of the box than dotnet does. No frameworks supports, web, desktops, mobile and other use cases as much as dotnet. This is all provided by Microsoft. Java is close, but it relies on a lot of third party libraries. Let alone thrown in all the tools to support these things. Microsoft supports 6 languages I can think of. C#, VB, Python, Java, Typescript. F# four of those are all Microsofts burden. Three of those all work with dotnet with no third party additions. You could say IronPython counts too since that is binding for dotnet in python, but it hasn't been updated. You then have the CLR. Which has another language associated with it in IL. You could also say there are WASM binding for dotnet too. This is just the languages. Then you have the dotnet framework itself. It has binding for SQL Server, Entity Framework, DI, web libraries, crypto libraries, desktop libraries, mobile, image libraries, json, xml and the list goes on. I am just throwing stuff out there, but this is ALL provided by MS themselves. Everything I mentioned is MS only other than the the few languages they support in VS. This is your baseline of what MS uses their resources on. Not only is this baseline, but this is all JUST the DOTNET FRAMEWORK. Let alone a slew of other opensource projects, like Typescript, VS Code, and Azure Data Studio to name a few. They are still adding more to the whole thing. So I would say that a desktop platform for a community that only complains about the company is going to be low on their list of support. Because 1 they don't care, and 2 the Linux community is going to hate it any way. They will just use this as "more proof of embrace, extend, extinguish" because isn't that what MS supporting Linux desktop would look like? It must really be MS trying to just make it so everyone is dependent on them for everything so they can pull the carpet out from under them and finally destroy the cancer that is Linux. So to summarize. Yes Microsoft has more resources, but they also support a lot more than any other company out there when it comes to developers. I too want Linux support but stop throwing shade at MS. It makes the rest of the community look like a bunch of whiny peasants. If you have something to add to the conversation please add it, but to say MS doesn't have the resource, or know how is just wrong and misinformed. |
That right there is the reason why the linux community hates Microsoft. Maybe there is a reason a lot of the linux community hates microsoft. I think your attitude is why there is only 1 active native cross platform C# gui. I think its time Microsoft provided a good cross platform GUI library that doesn't try to Custom rendering is fine for web and newer versions of windows if microsoft so chooses, Microsoft, Lets stop creating a new ui every 4 years and actually make this one good. |
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Also to answer your questions @lucasfolino
I would choose gtk2 since it seems to be the most compatible across all linux distros.
Your going to write a skin for every OS, distro and theme out there? |
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The open source community should not use ethics to kidnap each other, so as to provide open source solutions for free. So obviously, if the peoples want it, they should do it themselves.Moreover, the advantage of linux is not in its desktop part. I support the community in launching such projects like this project. |
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Regarding other, The idea is to paint the widgets.
Skia's website (not SkiaSharp): https://skia.org/ Mono Project uses Skia (via SkiaSharp) to draw the Win.Forms widgets This is interesting : https://www.mono-project.com/docs/gui/winforms/#why-not-use-native-widgets |
I completely agree with you, my vote for rendering UI using Graphics API like Skia. Why is it bad idea ? Because mistakes done in underlying system will be multiplied on mistakes in .NET MAUI and it will be support hell !! Also see my issue posted on: |
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Finally, I have Maui for GTK working pretty good. I did not want to say anything until I had it working. Open to the public: Check it out! |
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My version contains Prism for Maui GTK too: https://github.com/DerbyRussell/maui/tree/derby-gtk3-integration-prism |
What Prism? This? |
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Yes, that is where I got the source code for Prism. But now works with GTK in my repository |
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Sorry Guys and Gals, The samples are a starting point and absolutely must be working! |
Sorry for not trying it but just asking because it is quicker: |
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No, I didn't work at all on BlazorWebView |
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BlazorWebView shouldn't be hard because I already have the buttons, labels, check boxes etc ready for MAUI and BlazorWebView is simply HTML converted to all these items. |
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I haven't had time for BlazorWebView. |
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I also did not have time for Menu or Menu Bar, Flyout Page. And because Microsoft is only supporting ListView control in a backwards compatibility mode only, I did not work on the ListView control. The ListView is actually very similar to the BlazorWebView control in terms of difficulty. |
How to build on Windows visual studio and publish to Linux? |
At my org, we use VS Linux Debugger. Self-plugs aside, this will help you to deploy your C# apps onto your remote Linux machine. While auto-attaching to GUI apps for debugging is a work-in-progress, you can still launch your app and manually attach to the remote process in Visual Studio. These steps are outlined on the Marketplace and GitHub pages 👍 |
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another attempt is here: jsuarezruiz/maui-linux#66 |
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is android not supported on dotnet 8.0 arm Ubuntu?
Workload ID Descriptionaspire .NET Aspire SDK (Preview)
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I am so sorry for that.
I found this link:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/install/linux-ubuntu-install?pivots=os-linux-ubuntu-other&tabs=dotnet8
and it seems to solve your issue.
Please let me know,
Derby
…On Wed, Apr 3, 2024 at 8:10 PM amirvenus ***@***.***> wrote:
is android not supported on dotnet 8.0 arm Ubuntu?
dotnet workload search
Workload ID Description
aspire .NET Aspire SDK (Preview)
macos .NET SDK Workload for building macOS applications.
maui-tizen .NET MAUI SDK for Tizen
maui-windows .NET MAUI SDK for Windows
wasi-experimental workloads/wasi-experimental/description
wasm-experimental workloads/wasm-experimental/description
wasm-tools .NET WebAssembly build tools
dotnet workload install android
Workload ID android isn't supported on this platform.
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and others
Linux runs on a high diversity of devices of different form factors and possibilities.
.NET MAUI will give official support to Android, iOS, macOS and Windows. The purpose of this issue is to collect feedback to specify possible actions at the community level to review Linux support in .NET MAUI.
Linux support in Xamarin.Forms is achieved thanks to a backend using GTK Sharp 2.12.
Possible options for .NET MAUI:
Add your feedback!. What do you think is the best option to add Linux support to .NET MAUI? What would you use it for (Raspberry PI Apps, IoT, Desktop App, etc)?
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