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Winapps for work stuff (lemm.ee)

submitted 16 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

25 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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] 4 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

What was the barrier between LibreOffice/OpenOffice and 365? I know there's something that just doesn't translate right, but I can't really remember what, tbh. If I was faced with the same problem, I think I'd just dual boot. Windows for work, Linux for play.

That solution is tantamount to smacking it with a club these days, but I haven't taken the time to familiarize myself with VMs yet. Honestly, its in my list of skills to learn along things like Docker. The future seems to be moving in that direction and I'm lagging behind.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

The office format or something else?

About the format; OOXML (.docx etc.) was "standardized" (whole drama here) in reaction to standardization of ODF. But that "standard" relies mostly on proprietary extensions and MS reprtedly doesn't fully keep to it anymore, causing repeatedly issues with formating in everything else aside MS Office/365.

Some more details here.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 32 minutes ago

This is exactly what I was looking for. The more I read it, the angrier I get. The fact that something as simple as a text document format can be force standardized, monopolized, and overcharged for is ludicrous. All because of a proprietary extension loophole.

Thank you for the info.