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?
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.