Winapps for work stuff

If you can't get rid of Office, then isolate it in the browser.

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.

I have a 10 years+ of this experience.... There are a few things, you can DM me if you want to go in details. Here is a list in no particular order.

1.My host machine is always been system76 or tuxedo computers and OSs have been Ubuntu, Manjaro, pop os, Debian And a fee others. deb based have worked very well for me.. .

2. I have a VM that is setup as a work machine of Windows 11.

3. My 2nd client is a control freak so they sent me a laptop which is sitting permanently in my closet connected to a raspberry pi with a hat. Its basically a KVM over IP. My machine /phone/tablet is part of my private virtual home network so I can jump into that machine with any of those devices with just a browser.

4. From your Linux host machine dedicate one browser altogether to office e.g. if you use Firefox dedicate a Chromium to that office. Bonus points if that browser is in a docker :) then you have no cookie mixing and is a cleaner setup. From this dedicated browser use "login. Microsoft. Com" without spaces ofc, and can use all apps (if the admin has allowed it from your comoany) and there is no hyper overkill intune or other Mac address / machine name related shenanigans setup by your company admin.

In my story, it started before 2010, I tried the Linux (Ubuntu) host and wine based office apps and that was slower than (and had issues other than slowness, I sometimes have 200mb+ of excel files with is text only CSV before I convert them into something sensible) and VM based workflow was faster and more stable. TBH I didn't delve into wine based apps since then because the work/clients logging also get machine info. Etc.... In a VM I can control most of it and in a kvm over ip, it's completely stealth. You can connect a Macbook pro m3 for the heck of it on that KVM setup and no one would have any idea (apart from hardware name of monitor and keyboard mouse names, which you can go extra mile and change if you really want to).... (FYI I am not an IT person so apologise in advance for the above if this is an overkill, this tipic is dear to my heart and is a hobby so to speak, so happy to help if you DM me)

Are you required to use the Microsoft Suite or do they only care about the resulting file type? I would just use Libre if the latter, although I'd suggest spending a day or two getting used to the slightly altered workflow before introducing it to your work life.

If the former, keep it in the browser like others have mentioned. Web apps are kinda the direction they're moving anyway, so I wouldn't be surprised if we're all getting used to them in a few years anyway

As this is for work you want reliability and as Microsoft have a habit of changing stuff so stuff breaks I would suggest the web apps or if you need advanced features from the apps, a Windows VM. The latter is what I do, admittedly I manage and develop for m365 so my needs are greater than someone just using Office.

The web apps are pretty good, not a 100% feature match but good enough for most people, some things are actually better now in the web app. I would only write them off if you have really shitty unreliable internet or really need something not yet supported in the web app.

Otherwise go with a VM, but it will push up the specs of your device as you will need a decent amount of RAM and cores that you can dedicate to the VM if you want responsive behavior from Office clients particularly with large files. I assign 16Gb RAM and 4 cores (I have a 8945HS) and its pretty snappy. I can run it in 8Gb but its a bit shit when working with large spreadsheets, power bi, or trying to multi task with multiple office apps open.

You don't say if you need to use Teams but there is a Linux port of Teams, which is ok, not great, just ok. Personally run the web app of teams for chat on my Linux host and use Teams on my phone for meetings. Works much better for me.

Final thing to be aware of are the policies implemented by your company. Some require that your PC is "trusted" before you can fully connect to m365. This is far easier to work around with a Windows VM.

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.

In my experience winapps doesn't work well enough to use for work. I had almost constant issues with it.

I struggled like you for a long time until I found a happy medium. I have a folder on my C: drive called utilities. It's been added to the %PATH%. In it, I have eget with a config for all my utilities for making Windows easier to use. I also have BusyBox for Windows.

It emulates a good 90% of *nix utilities without having to deal with WSL (older environments) or doing anything extensive to your environment (corporate laptop friendly). I recommend you at least give it a try and see if it works for you.

Here's my ~/.config/eget.toml

❯ cat eget.toml
[global]
    github_token = ""
    quiet = false
    show_hash = false
    upgrade_only = true
    system = "windows/amd64"
["sharkdp/fd"]
    asset_filters = ["gnu"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\fd.exe"
["nojima/httpie-go"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\ht.exe"
["schollz/croc"]
    asset_filters = ["64bit", "Windows7" ]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\croc.exe"
["BurntSushi/ripgrep"]
    asset_filters = ["pc-windows-gnu", "^sha256"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\rg.exe"
["go-task/task"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\task.exe"
["vamolessa/verco"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\verco.exe"
["ajeetdsouza/zoxide"]
    asset_filters = ["msvc"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\zoxide.exe"
["ducaale/xh"]
    asset_filters = ["msvc"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\xhs.exe"
["casey/just"]
    asset_filters = ["msvc"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\just.exe"
["sxyazi/yazi"]
    asset_filters = ["msvc"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\yazi.exe"
["Dundee/gdu"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\gdu.exe"
["charmbracelet/skate"]
    asset_filters = ["x86_64", "^json"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\skate.exe"
["charmbracelet/gum"]
    asset_filters = ["x86_64", ".zip", "^json"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\gum.exe"
["Wilfred/difftastic"]
    asset_filters = ["msvc"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\diff.exe"
["zyedidia/eget"]
    asset_filters = ["zip", "amd64"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\eget.exe"
["sharkdp/diskus"]
    asset_filters = ["gnu"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\diskus.exe"
["fastfetch-cli/fastfetch"]
    asset_filters = ["zip"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\fetch.exe"
["junegunn/fzf"]
    asset_filters = ["zip"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\fzf.exe"
["orf/gping"]
    asset_filters = ["zip"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\gping.exe"
["jqlang/jq"]
    asset_filters = ["amd64"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\jq.exe"
["caarlos0/jsonfmt"]
    asset_filters = [".tar.gz"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\jsonfmt.exe"
["lsd-rs/lsd"]
    asset_filters = ["pc-windows-msvc.zip"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\lsd.exe"
["ouch-org/ouch"]
    asset_filters = ["gnu"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\pack.exe"
["SpatiumPortae/portal"]
    asset_filters = ["x86_64"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\pack.exe"
["rclone/rclone"]
    asset_filters = ["amd64", "zip"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\rclone.exe"
["upx/upx"]
    asset_filters = ["win64"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\upx.exe"
["mcmilk/7-Zip-zstd"]
    asset_filters = ["x64"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\7z.exe"
["facebook/zstd"]
    asset_filters = ["win64"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\zstd.exe"
["yt-dlp/yt-dlp"]
    asset_filters = ["yt-dlp.exe"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\yt-dlp.exe"
["aria2/aria2"]
    asset_filters = ["win", "64bit"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\aria2c.exe"
["restic/restic"]
    asset_filters = ["windows", "amd64"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\restic.exe"
["Beastwick18/nyaa"]
    asset_filters = ["windows", "exe"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\nyaa.exe"
["walles/moar"]
    asset_filters = ["windows"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\moar.exe"
["alecthomas/chroma"]
    asset_filters = ["amd64", "windows"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\chroma.exe"
["charmbracelet/glow"]
    asset_filters = ["x86_64", "^json"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\glow.exe"
["arsham/blush"]
    asset_filters = ["windows", "zip"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\blush.exe"
["nushell/nushell"]
    asset_filters = ["pc-windows-msvc.zip"]
    file = "nu.exe"
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\nu.exe"
["owenthereal/ccat"]
    asset_filters = ["windows-amd64"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\ccat.exe"
["FiloSottile/age"]
    asset_filters = ["windows-amd64.zip", "^proof"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\age.exe"
["Owloops/updo"]
    asset_filters = ["Windows_x86_64"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\updo.exe"
["mr-karan/doggo"]
    asset_filters = ["Windows_x86_64"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\dog.exe"
["aandrew-me/tgpt"]
    asset_filters = ["amd64", "exe"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\llm.exe"
["8LWXpg/ptr"]
    asset_filters = ["x86_64"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\ptr.exe"
["astral-sh/ruff"]
    asset_filters = ["pc-windows", "msvc", "x86_64"]
    target = "C:\\Utilities\\exe\\ruff.exe"

It's nice because you can update everything by running eget --download-all.

All the Office suite has browser based versions. Why would you even bothering to install them?

Regardless, they will work just as well on a VM under Linux as they would on Windows.

I would separate those all together. I think there’s should be a distinct line between the two. If they have you install special software. You need to make the split right away. You don’t want them to spy on you.

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.

Office 365 running on Linux using Wine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCfQzQI6HAw

I've never heard of Winapps so did a quick google. Their repository has not been updated in 5 years so it looks abandoned. Probably a bad idea to use it. https://github.com/Fmstrat/winapps

I might be daft (Mac for desktop use, Linux for servers), but do they not run with Wine?