365 admin here. Use whatever distro you want and just use the web versions of Office apps. They've been greatly improved and are nearly identical to their desktop counterparts. Especially if you're leaning heavily into OneDrive/Sharepoint.

Personally, I've had no problems whatsoever running the Office 365 apps needed by my school on Debian's version of Firefox ESR. Aside from Outlook and Teams, I'm not asked to use them very often, as most assignments are turned in as PDFs, but when I have been required to use Word and Excel, I have had no problems.

Apparently GNOME 46 introduced support for Microsoft 365 accounts including OneDrive support in the file manager, so a distro that runs a recent GNOME version, such as Fedora or Ubuntu, may be your best option. But without that, you can still use a third-party project like onedriver or abraunegg's OneDrive client.

I use the web version of all O365 apps, even Teams, and I also have a Windows VM in case I need the desktop apps for whatever reason.

For teams specifically I'm just using the web version with chromium. Installed as a chromium app so I have quick access to it and have it on my taskbar. Rest of Office 365 works just fine in any browser. (Outlook, SharePoint, Power apps etc) For OneDrive Sync you can use https://abraunegg.github.io/ which should work on most distros.

I would highly recommend against installing a pirated version of Windows like BearOfATime suggests (at least via the second link he provided) - it could cause trouble for both you and your school.

I would go with the web apps for the office stuff and recommend Thunderbird as a client for outlook.

Office won't run on Linux or through Wine (AFAIK), I've converted to using LibreOffice on both Linux and Windows, which has yet to give me any issues.

Teams, as part of O365, also doesn't have a Linux app, however... with the (paid) Thunderbird addon Owl for Exchange, you can read+send Outlook emails; it also adds a Teams icon to your Thunderbird sidebar that acts as a link to the web client.

Thunderbird, by default, can only read from Exchange mailboxes, but can't send from them. If you don't want to pay, the developers are working to add full Exchange support as stock. (There are also less legitimate ways to get Exchange support, like cracking Owl, but out of respect for the addon dev, you'll have to find it yourself)

Edit:

If you're new to Linux as a whole, I've seen many recommendations for Mint (a Debian and Ubuntu derivative), but I've never tried it myself. I started with Debian since I wanted a stable system that wouldn't break down by itself or something. It's rock solid on my Framework 13 Ryzen.

As for a Desktop Environment (DE), you can't go wrong with GNOME or KDE. I prefer KDE since I don't like the "look" of GNOME and it's more "Windows-like" (but still it's own thing), but it's really just personal preference.

From all the comments it looks like it's quite a challenge to go native Linux.

One option, run a VM using KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine, native to some distros).

You can install Windows IOT LTSC (Long-term Servicing Channel), which receives only security updates 2x/year, no others. It also doesn't have all the bloat. It's what I run for daily use.

Win10 LTSC. It gets updates 2x/year, has very minimal bloat.

Windows LTSC Downloads, don't forget to grab the key.

Then get O&O Shutup to reduce bloat even more (mostly just to limit telemetry on Windows).

And you can permanently license it using Microsoft's own scripts. - Scripts on Github.

At one time you could directly launch apps in VMs using SeamlessRDP, I'm not sure if that still works or if there's something new.

As others have said, wtf is wrong with the school - requiring OneDrive? FFS

1. Install the user Flatpak for Teams
2. Log into your OneDrive online account, use the file manager plugin for the files
3. Use any mail client you like for the e-mail, Thunderbird for example works fine
4. Use the web version of Office, sadly

Any distro that can run Chromium / Chrome. And everything other than Teams will work even on Firefox.

So I'm confused. Wouldn't you want Windows? Also outlook can be replaced by Thunderbird.

So basically I see two options. First, if your device has 4 or more cores and 16gb of ram you can run Windows in KVM. If that isn't the case you need to pickup another device or not use Linux.

No distro can just do that.

Try crossover, which is said to have best Windows app support. But Microsoft is actively fighting it, on their apps.

Your school is very, very, very shitty.

Any distro should work just fine, so the typical three: Debian, Fedora, Arch, or something else. Gnome 46 supposedly added support for Microsoft accounts as well as onedrive in the Nautilus file manager, so you should be able to “store all of your data.”

None of those things you've mentioned require you to install something to your system. Outlook has a website which works perfectly fine on Firefox, and you can access OneDrive on web. As for Teams, I've had varying amounts of luck with the web app, but I think that's more to do with my myriad browser addons than my system? I dunno though

I'm using arch Linux. But for the most part I don't think it really matters.

Flatpack Teams, and web version the rest of the M$ software.

It works well enough. Though web versions of M$ software is weirdly limited for reasons I can only understand as arbitration.

For instance very large excel files don't load in web excel, and iirc you cannot insert formulas in web word.

Any distro you'd like. Use the office / outlook stuff in a browser. I believe kde has a way to use onedrive in dolphin, though personally I would keep my data on my computer unless it is for a group project, just make sure it's backed up. I'd also have a VM handy with the spice guest tools. It is good to have at least for when you have to hand your computer to someone who may be uncomfortable with linux. I would use debian on a school computer for the ludicrous stability, but use whatever floats your boat.

Micro$oft loves Open-source... Well, .. not unless they need to support it, instead of ripper off all the open-source developers.

When I had to use Office and LibreOffice wasn’t sufficient, I just had a Windows VM running. The web versions are hot garbage (or at least used to be 3 years ago and I doubt that’s changed). I’m not sure if there’s a direct way to mount OneDrive on Linux (rclone maybe?) but if there isn’t you could do that via a network share over the VM.

KMail can connect to Exchange mailboxes. KOrganizer might even be able to access the calendar from one, I don’t remember.

See wubuntu, it has OneDrive client https://sourceforge.net/projects/windows-ubuntu/

Any distro.

Use a Windows VM for things that are unavailable or don't work well as a web app. The absolute easiest way to run a Windows VM is VMware Player especially if you use a stable OS like Debian or Ubuntu LTS. The built-in KVM hypervisor works fine too but it requires more work to setup a Windows VM with all the drivers, shared folder, etc. And it won't have graphics acceleration of any sort. With that said I've personally migrated from VMware to KVM in anticipation that Broadcom who recently purchased VMware will turn their software to shit or start asking for more money, or both.

Linux won't give you much more privacy in your case. I would recommend storing and manipulating your personal data on a separate Linux machine and please don't store anything except what's absolutely necessary on OneDrive. Though if you can't afford a separate machine, you can run Linux to get at least some improvement. I think the only DE that has good MS cloud support is the latest version of GNOME so you need a distro with that DE. It can be Ubuntu 24.04 (or something based on it) or a rolling release. The last one may be more difficult to use in some cases but idk any other somewhat user friendly options.