How to Use FastReport .NET Avalonia on Fedora Workstation with Wayland Protocol

Wayland is a protocol designed to manage a graphical server in Linux-based operating systems and other UNIX-like OS.

Avalonia UI is a framework based on .NET, actively used for developing cross-platform user interfaces. With a universal API for building applications, Avalonia supports all major platforms and runtime environments and has its unique interface. This way, your business solutions will look identical across every operating system.

FastReport .NET Avalonia includes a powerful data processing core, a familiar report designer, and a viewer for finished reports. The new product also offers all export formats for the generated report — PDF, Excel, MS Word, and many others.

In this article, we will discuss how to run FastReport .NET Avalonia on the "Fedora Workstation 39" operating system with Wayland protocol.

Main Differences Between Wayland and X11

1. In the Wayland protocol, versions permeate it from top to bottom. Each interface has a specific version, and each protocol object implements a specific version of its interface. This eliminates the possibility of version conflicts that exist in X, as version negotiation is tied to the connection rather than to the clients. Unlike X11, in Wayland, it is possible to precisely determine which version of an extension an application receives.
   
   
2. Working with input devices in Wayland is similar to Xinput 2.2, but without the outdated code clutter and Master/Slave relationships between input devices. The global object seat defines a group of input devices, including a mouse, keyboard, and touchscreen.
   
   
3. Unlike X, Wayland does not have an API for rendering and does not deal with creating graphical images. Its role is to manage buffers containing client pixels in such a way that application A does not make unwanted changes to the buffers of application B. Clients determine which pixels will be in the buffers and are responsible for the image that is displayed on the screen!

Installation of Required Software

We need to update the indices, as well as install .NET 6.0 for further work. Open the console and enter the following commands:

sudo dnf update

sudo dnf install dotnet-sdk-6.0

After that, download the FastReport .NET Avalonia Trial library for Linux from the Fast Reports Inc. website.

Next, extract the FastReport.Avalonia.LinuxDemo.zip archive into a convenient directory.

Running FastReport .NET Avalonia

Open the terminal and navigate to the directory where you extracted the FastReport .NET Avalonia Trial application, and then enter the linux-x64 folder.

To run the FastReport .NET Avalonia Trial, we need to enter the following command in the terminal:

dotnet AvaloniaDemo.dll

After that, you will be able to view the demonstration report of FastReport .NET Avalonia.

It's time to go to the report designer. To do this, click on the "Designer" button in the upper panel of the demo application.

Thus, we have managed to run FastReport .NET Avalonia on the "Fedora Workstation 39" operating system with the Wayland protocol. There is nothing complicated about launching and setting up the connection. It is enough to install the SDK packages and unpack the archive with the application, after which you can use the report designer. For any questions, please contact our technical support at support@fast-report.com. Enjoy using it!