Flutter VS Introducing .NET Multi-platform App UI (MAUI)

bash git clone https://github.com/flutter/flutter.git -b stable echo 'export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/flutter/bin"' >> ~/.bashrc source ~/.bashrc flutter doctor

Download and install Flutter SDK from flutter.dev.

🎯 Still confused? Start with Flutter, which lets you build both iOS & Android apps with one codebase! Check it out here

Flutter provides robust support for NFC through third-party packages, making implementation seamless.

if cd flutter; then git pull && cd .. ; else git clone https://github.com/flutter/flutter.git; fi && ls && flutter/bin/flutter doctor && flutter/bin/flutter clean && flutter/bin/flutter config --enable-web

$ flutter --version Flutter 3.27.4 • channel stable • https://github.com/flutter/flutter.git Framework • revision d8a9f9a52e (9 days ago) • 2025-01-31 16:07:18 -0500 Engine • revision 82bd5b7209 Tools • Dart 3.6.2 • DevTools 2.40.3 $ node --version v20.18.1 $ npm --version 10.8.2

Flutter is a powerful, popular, and open-source platform known for its developer-friendly environment, wide ecosystem of libraries, extensions and other tools. A key feature of Flutter app development services is that it promotes the development of cross-platform applications without needing to build or write two or three different codebases.

IMO it would make the most sense if code generation was integral part of the dart build system. Few years ago I described shortcomings of build_runner on github https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/63323, not much changed afaik.

Just a few hours ago, the .NET MAUI team announced a significant change coming in .NET 10: the ListView control and all its related cell types (TextCell, ImageCell, ViewCell, etc.) will be marked as obsolete. This decision is part of Microsoft's strategy to streamline the developer experience by focusing on a single, optimized control for displaying collections of data. Which I'm personally happy with, the less duplicated controls to maintain the better.

Unified Codebases: Frameworks like Uno Platform and .NET MAUI enable developers to write once and deploy across web and native platforms.

I am migrating XF app into MAUI and writing a simple Navigation framework because Prism doesn't work well and I didn't use anything advanced anyway. So, I am surfing the code of MAUI to intercept all the back buttons, etc. I haven't found a single mention of apis related to predictive back "RegisterOnBackInvokedCallback", "OnBackInvokedDispatcher", "OnBackPressedDispatcher", "AddCallback", "android:enableOnBackInvokedCallback" Also I don't see any issue on github that would say "Support Android Predictive back". Only one kinda related https://github.com/dotnet/maui/issues/8680

Below issue is still reproducing in Maui .net7.0 version also. #10163

Maui is Open Source, MIT License

https://github.com/dotnet/maui

.NET is Open Source

https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/platform/open-source

I do share your skepticism of Microsoft, but it looks like the economics and cash flow dynamics have changed drastically after the advent of the cloud.

Microsoft is more focused on getting developers onto its ecosystem and help them with open source projects with the hope that they will use its Azure cloud services and bring in the money.

My skepticism is a bit relaxed now and I have no qualms using .NET.

I hope I am not wrong.

It's a bit of a hit and miss as of today. CLI, back-end and natively compiled libraries (think dll/so/dylib or even .lib/.a - you can statically link NAOT binaries into other "unmanaged" code) work best, GUI - requires more work.

Avalonia[0] and MAUI[1] have known working templates with it, but YMMV.

[0] https://github.com/lixinyang123/AvaloniaAOT / https://github.com/AvaloniaUI/Avalonia/ / honorable mention https://github.com/VincentH-Net/CSharpForMarkup

[1] https://github.com/dotnet/maui (try out with just true in csproj - it is known to work e.g. on iOS)

While this is the quite endorsed by the community: https://github.com/dotnet/maui/discussions/339

I think the fundamental issue is that desktop Linux is way too fragmented. Not only just GTK2/3 and Qt but you have GNOME, KDE, XFCE, Cinnamon and then you have X11, Xorg, Wayland...

To be honest, all those craps are why desktop Linux never took off. I'm very safe to say MAUI for Linux will eventually renders components off its own using framebuffer and hardware acceleration APIs such as OpenGL or Vulkan just because of the market fragmentations...

If desktop Linux truly wants to get the attention, it will need to unify. Fixing dependency hell using Flatpak is the right direction.

There is an existing old fork of MAUI for Linux that uses GTK: https://github.com/jsuarezruiz/maui-linux