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?

  • 𝘋𝘪𝘳𝘬@lemmy.ml
    4·
    5 days ago

    If your company goes full-on Microsoft cloud (including OneDrive), maybe try logging in on https://www.microsoft365.com/ with your corporate account. From there you have access to all the OneDrive files that are shared with you, as well as all Office web applications (they’re basically identical with the installed apps).

    Using a Chromium-based browser you can run the individual web-apps like chromium --app="https://...." to give them a more native look-and-feel by removing the browser interface.

    Same goes for Teams, btw.: Just open http://teams.microsoft.com/, it works just like the installed version. Including audio, video, screen sharing, and notifications.