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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

What i did for work stuff that needs windows is i got an old Thinkpad T440S and put windows on that and just use it for work. Things worth like 50$ lol.