CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxuser-interface2dgraphic
aaronqli
aaronqli

Reputation: 809

Linux open source 2d GUI engine comparable to WPF

I am looking for a 2d open source GUI engine on Linux, to eliminate our reliance on Windows. Our current application is written in C# + WPF, which is incredibly slow and costly. It is stopping us to do anything awesome. If there is anything in Linux that can offer what WPF could offer (easy to use designer, animations, layout and component controls, etc) I would rather rewrite my entire code base in C++/Java in Linux.

Qt is one option but I am a little bit worried about its support in the future, given recently Nokia fired the entire team.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 405

Answers (2)

Linuxios
Linuxios

Reputation: 35823

I would still suggest Qt. Even if Nokia destroys all of their support for it, Qt is under the LGPL. That means that the source will still be available and free (libre), and the KDE community will keep it going. They already are to a degree anyway. Also, although Qt is still C++, it is a very modified extension of C++ through the meta object compiler (moc), a special sort of preproccessor. I think you won't regret the choice to use Qt.

Of course, if you want to stay on C# and .NET, there is the open source Mono initiative, who are trying to create a drop in replacement for .NET and C# that is mostly compatible. I don't know if they support anything besides Win Forms, but there are bindings for almost every graphics lib out there, so you can use GTK (a binding called GTK#), Qt, WxWidgets, and a lot of other things.

Also, there are GNOME's Glib and GTK+, which are the other major interface libraries for Linux. They are C oriented, so you might have a harder time adapting your code though.

Upvotes: 1

perreal
perreal

Reputation: 98028

You can check out Moonlight:

Silverlight implement a subset of the WPF APIs and is available on Windows, MacOS X and through our own open source effort Moonlight it is available on Linux and other Unix systems.

Silverlight does not have all the capabilities of WPF, but both technologies are converging API-wise.

Silverlight can now be used outside of the browser, and Moonlight can be configured to be used with the full .NET API outside of the browser.

more...

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions