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submitted 1 day ago by blind3rdeye@lemm.ee to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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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[-] MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 4 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

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 reportedly doesn't fully keep to it anymore, causing repeatedly issues with formating in everything else aside of MS Office/365.

Some more details here.

[-] Eyedust@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 8 hours 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.

this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2025
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