It's worth to note that MAUI is not cross-platform (Microsoft say it is, but for me excluding Linux desktop and calling it cross-pratform is a lie/marketing bullshit)

That's not true. They support Android, iOS, and MacOS. I agree it's disappointing that they don't support Linux, but it is by definition cross-platform.

MAUI uses native controls, wrapped in its own system. Considering that Flutter draws everything itself I'd say that's a pretty substantial difference. It also manifests in how close to native your app can look/feel or how easy it is to integrate features of the respective native controls.

Avalonia is perhaps closer to Flutter.

Why do you think it is similar to Dart/Flutter? MAUI is basically a dolled-up Xamarin, but catered to .net 6+ (which has the ios/android toolchains as first party TFMs so it makes it much nicer to organize projects in some ways).

It also comes with a slew of new bugs : )

As usual, the true test of whether something will stick is what apps/tools is Microsoft building with MAUI? If nothing, then good chance it is a yet another framework thrown at developers and abandoned five years later.

Does this take anything away from the rest of .NET?

Serious question.

Not expressly, I just wouldn't invest in it, since it will likely fall into a dead end, like Silverlight.

I'm not sure you answered my question.

Just don't use MAUI, in favor of anything else?

With all its quirks, flutter is still miles ahead of MAUI (just look at actual usage of maui, it's close to 0). And imo they both take a pretty different approach anyways.

MAUI sucks big on desktop UI. Try Avalonia and it is 100 miles ahead of the game!

I see that Avalonia has a XAML previewer in VSCode. That's a big selling point for me so I'll give this a try. Thanks for mentioning it!