I like .NET Core a lot and use it for my back-end services, but when it comes to giving things to end users there is just no good story for it at all.

I'd be more than happy to try .NET Maui but I have to keep a VM around to try it out on my main dev machine. I figure being a .NET developer on Linux you are always going to be slightly 2nd class in their eyes, but the experience with docker-ce and VSCode on Linux is streets ahead of Windows and WSL2 with that single glaring exception. It just can't be that hard.

Not really true, I develop .NET Core apps on Linux only. Migrated from Windows to actual Linux because of the simplicity.

what's wrong with WSL2? I've had a good experience with vscode running on windows with WSL remote connection.

There is nothing really wrong with it, I used it for a while but in the end I felt like Linux with extra steps was too much.

WSL2 allowed an easy migration path to VSCode but once I had that working, I found myself learning all the CLI for dotnet, docker and AWS to replace what I was doing in Visual Studio.

At that point I had nothing to lose and switched to Debian, which had the great side effect of making Android Studio better (the emulators on Linux seem faster and more reliable).

I don't hate WSL2 but if all your tools are supported on Linux, removing Windows from the equation makes your setup much simpler. At least it does for me.

I do work for myself though, so no corporate requirements held me back.

Have you tried Avalonia? It's not from Microsoft, but it's a .NET GUI solution that works on Linux and is really pretty good.

I'm fine with XAML, but I don't know what XAML platform is stable and futureproof. Maybe WPF, still.

imo. WPF seems like a good framework that will last a while, while not being a pain to work with like WinForms. I know there are better options nowadays but WPF is a trusted and established technology that will probably not fade a way for quite some time, simply because "it works" and there is no real reason to get rid of it.