Is there a cross-platform GUI framework for C#/.NET?

Question

Let's say just for the joy of it, I decide that I don't want to write desktop applications in Java any more, instead want to switch to using C#. I want to be able to build an application that will run on some mainstream Linux distribution, and a recent release of MS Windows. It will have a GUI component.

In Java I can build an application that uses Swing. Once I have it working, I can copy that jar file from Windows to Linux or vice versa, depending where I developed it. And it will generally run with java -jar myapp.jar.

In C# is it possible to do this? Is there a functional equivalent to Swing or AWT in C#?

Answer 1

You can try WxWidgets. It has support for C#, among many other languages, and is cross-platform. The only downside being a recompile for each platform. Alternatively you can try Mono which is very good, but beware there are a couple snags with compatibility issues. There is no predefined "run anywhere" file for C# apps yet like Java has with jars though, you're best bet is to recompile for each platform if you want to ensure compatibility.

Answer 2

The closest thing I've ever seen is Mono - though it doesn't support all the CLR libraries yet I believe, but it is cross-platform.

Answer 3

I believe a good portion of WinForms is implemented in Mono. You need to install Mono under Linux for that. You may have compatibility problems, though, since Mono is not a Microsoft effort and is not officially supported by them.

Answer 4

Probably GTK# would be the closest.

I know others have said mono, but that's not quite right. .Net is to mono as Microsoft's Java VM is to Sun's Java runtime. mono's not really in the same conceptual space as Swing. For that, GTK# is a closer match.

Answer 5

This page has a list of the GUI toolkits supported by Mono, including pros and cons for each of them. As others have suggested, WinForms, GTK#, and wxNet are all viable options.

Answer 6

Windows.Forms is the standard library for developing GUI applications for .NET

Despite of being very well supported on Windows, version 2.0 is fully implemented by Mono too, which makes it available on all platforms supported by Mono.

WPF on the other hand is is conceptually new library, for now it is fully supported mainly on Windows only and just a subset of it supported by Mono by their Silverlight implementation - Moonlight.

If you are building application for productive cross-platform use and/or have conservative performance constraints go Windows Forms.

If you want to experiment and learn something new or if you are developing new application for Windows go WPF. This is the new technology for client GUI applications.