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Winapps for work stuff (lemm.ee)

submitted 19 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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tl;dr : Does Office 365 work well on Linux via winapps?

longer version:

At my work, I'm currently using my own (Windows) laptop. But its getting a bit long in the tooth, and my tolerance of Windows continues to drop... So I'm considering my options.

One option is to buy myself a new laptop and use Linux. The main barrier to this is that I use Office 365 stuff a lot for work. (Specifically: Word, Excel, and OneNote).

In my brief look around, my impression is that the only reliable way to get those products running on Linux is using winapps; which, as I understand it, basically runs the apps in a virtual machine but tries to make them look like they are running on the host OS.

(The alternative option is that my work will lend a Windows laptop to me indefinitely. But I generally like my stuff to be my own, and I don't like to create waste by accepting cheap and crap laptops with short life-spans.)

I'm writing here to ask if anyone has any experience using winapps. Does it work reliably? Is it easy to open and save files without any weirdness? Will I be able to use a stylus to write notes in OneNote?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Either use qemu to run Windows in a VM, so you can run Office there, or use OnlyOffice, which is a free office app that has the best compatibility with MS office formats (better than libreoffice's). Wine, winapps etc won't work well.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Is there a reason why you've suggested qeumu in particular for the VM? (winapps suggests two different VM options)

I've never heard of OnlyOffice before. The wikipedia page seems to imply that they are web-apps; and the OnlyOffice website talks about pricing for businesses and personal severs or something, listing team collaboration features. So I'm not yet entirely sure exactly what OnlyOffice is - but I suspect it isn't really what I'm looking for.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Qemu/kvm is the default way of running a VM on Linux. Virtualbox or winapps or vmware are secondary options.

Onlyoffice is a newer kid on the block compared to libreoffice/openoffice. Yes, it's web based but it operates as if its a native app. It works well, and it has very good Ms office compatibility. So definitely download its .appimage and try it out. You don't lose anything to try it out. It's super easy to run: you download the appimage, you right click on the file to go to its properties and make it executable, and then you can run it. Test it with your files to make sure it supports them well.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago

Fair enough. Thanks for the info.