r/linux • u/Realistic-Gas-8720 • 18d ago
Development Microsoft office 365 will soon be under testing under "Soda" a fork of wine by Bottles
Mirko Brombin ([@brombinmirko](https://x.com/brombinmirko)), the founder of Bottles, shared an exciting update on bringing Microsoft Office 365 to Linux.
In [this tweet](https://x.com/brombinmirko/status/2102863875767152962) from September 23, 2026, he noted that after fixing some last-minute issues, Office 365 should be available for public testing within another day. The post quotes his earlier message from September 21, where he explained he was putting the final pieces together for a simple installer inside Bottles (a user-friendly Wine-based tool). He shared screenshots showing the setup process, including installing a specialized runner and the Microsoft 365 Apps installer itself.
The community response has been enthusiastic. Users praised the work, expressed eagerness to try it, and thanked him for making the desktop Office suite more accessible on Linux without needing virtual machines. Some asked practical questions—whether the full suite including Teams would work, details on activation, or what specifically required custom Bottles configurations beyond standard Wine.
This effort highlights ongoing open-source progress in running Windows applications smoothly on Linux. Brombin emphasized that early components were already visible but not yet ready for use, promising a proper guide once everything is polished. The thread reflects growing interest among Linux users who want reliable productivity tools while staying in their preferred environment.
and yes, it's still twitter for me
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u/nixcamic 18d ago
Is there any reason this has to be in a fork of wine instead of just wine?
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u/kaszak696 18d ago
Bottles maintains a few forks of Wine for their convenience, since their main goal is to be a sandbox that makes specific Windows programs run near-flawlessly by any means necessary. Sometimes, that requires specific, tailored Wine patches that cannot be upstreamed, since they may break other things, or a specific Wine version or variant. Soda is just one of those, based on Proton with other various patches. They also have others, like pure Proton, pure Wine, Wine with patches etc.
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u/FattyDrake 18d ago
Maybe they used LLM tools. Wine has a hard no LLM policy because of their strict clean room requirements to avoid legal problems. Despite popular belief, LLMs cannot produce clean room code simply because you'd need to know every single thing it was trained on.
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u/Ghost_x_Knight 18d ago
He mentioned that no LLM code generation was used, but he used LLM for diagnosis.
He mentioned he wants to collaborate with CodeWeavers to get the fix upstreamed to WINE, or he might release the fix as a DLL.
CodeWeavers' clean room policy are quite strict to eliminate legal risks. They don't allow someone who looked at relevant LLM code (even for research/diagnosis) to upstream their own code. But a potential collaboration might be possible if he provides a blueprint/checklist/blackbox-description of the things that needs to be done to get MS Office working.
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u/Easy-Truck4725 18d ago
You can't contribute to Wine if you've ever seen Windows code, either from leaks, employment at Microsoft or with a driver partner - any exposure to Windows code at all excludes you from being able to contribute.
And because of those leaks and the fact that Microsoft is not a particularly GOOD steward of Github, there's tremendous possibility that actual Windows code can be emitted by an LLM. We do already know LLMs emit complete code snippets - for a little while early chatbots would produce the full inverse squre root snippet, complete with
// what the fuck?comment.Meanwhile, ReactOS, another project which also has to prove it contains only clean-room code, is happily allowing LLM emissions.
The solution, of course, to all of these problems (and many more!) is to simply never invoke an LLM.
I don't care if Office starts working on Linux if it came from an LLM. That's not cool. I like human ingenuity. I'll happily celebrate a genius who gets it rolling, but not this LLM garbage. Humans are cool, computers suck.
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u/pickle9977 18d ago
You are probably gonna get downvoted a lot, but I’m with you on this.
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u/Easy-Truck4725 18d ago
Looks like i haven't been so far but that's fine. This one will get me downvoted though: I think everyone who makes, distributes, uses, advocates LLMs should go to prison for a very long time :)
Double length sentence for anyone who says "you just have to use it as a tool, not a crutch".
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u/BlakeLeeOfGelderland 17d ago
Damn my grandma should go to prison for asking gemini how long to poach an egg for? That's crazy
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u/Luna_COLON3 15d ago
the people who make them definitely, but we have to remember that most of the users are victims. LLMs are designed to be incredibly addictive and despite being an evil technology, they are undeniably useful for some things in the short term
saying that the useds of big AI companies should be put in prison will not help free our society from fascist technology
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u/LucieGoosey__ 18d ago
mine as well stop using Linux altogether, or your phone or home pc. go back to drawing on cave walls and foraging for food. no more agriculture for you because that was a major spiritual downgrade apparently
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u/Rentun 18d ago
If that's true, doesn't that mean every GPL licensed project has grounds to sue any proprietary software that uses LLMs?
Why does it work one way, but not the other?
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u/TeutonJon78 18d ago
You also have to prove that GPL code ended up in the closed source code, which would be harder to do than the other way around.
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u/FattyDrake 18d ago
Because corporations have an incomprehensible amount of money compared to FOSS projects and entire on-staff legal departments.
LLM companies have blatantly broken the law, found by courts to have broken the law, and just settled because it's pennies compared to the money they have on hand.
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u/mightyrfc 18d ago
Legit question: how they can tell the difference? I mean, I'm not talking about a garbage code that you clearly can spot it. If the code is decent enough and the author denies using LLM tools, how do they know?
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u/FattyDrake 18d ago
There is no way to know. But lets say it's a bit lax and one day Microsoft finds a few functions which are very similar to those in Windows, maybe even using specific variable names or such (I've seen this happen when LLMs are mimicking functions that only exist in one other place.) Or maybe it's violating a patent that would've been discovered had it gone through a proper process.
That'd be the end of Wine. It would cease to exist or at the very least no longer able to be included in distro packages and made irrelevant. And things that depend on Wine such as Proton? Also gone.
So why take a risk when the failure is the complete obliteration of a project?
In some ways using an LLM when a project forbids it is a selfish act which can make a whole ecosystem suffer.
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u/mightyrfc 17d ago
Thank you for your answer. It's a big risk indeed if you think about it. What about bad actors trying to sabotage the project? If nobody involved im the project knows Windows code, what stops them of merging a pull request of a bad actor trying to push proprietary code into the codebase?
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u/CMPunkLicksRocks 17d ago
By that logic human code can’t be submitted because you have no idea if someone has seen windows source code
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u/Tsuki4735 18d ago
My naive random guess would be that they used LLMs to get it working, and you can't upstream LLM code to Wine.
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u/mtfthrowaway39179 18d ago
afaik soda predates llms being coherent enough to be used for that. if i recall it was supposed to be for running windows games or something like that specifically.
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u/kevpatts 18d ago
Well it’s developed by the founder of Bottles, so that’s his environment of choice, and it’s a specific sandbox so faster to get it working there. I’m sure if it becomes stable many of the fixes that are compatible with upstream Wine will make it into Wine. Doesn’t mean it won’t need more work there to get it working though.
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u/zaafonin 17d ago
It's hard to get a large or otherwise ambitious set of patches merged in a bazaar-developed project if you're not a trusted dev there already, you have to start small and familiarize yourself with house rules on top of the codebase itself.
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u/Shot-Height-7194 13d ago
Because they probably cracked a DRM function which is illegal under us law aka the DMCA https://www.codeweavers.com/support/forums/general/?t=26;forumcurPos=50;msg=286876
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u/ABotelho23 18d ago
And then it'll break next week because Microsoft 365 is not stable in that way.
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u/Alex_Strgzr 17d ago
I am not paying for MS Office, I would rather donate my money to almost anything else
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u/WalrusExciting3430 17d ago
I have to use office 365 at work. I want nothing to do with it on my home machine.
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u/Additional-Sky-7436 18d ago
0% chance Microsoft allows this.
It'll be borked in less than a week.
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u/sphericalhors 18d ago
Actually its time for Microsoft to make a native MS Office port for Linux. It would not hurt their sales more than they already did by adding all those AI slop in Windows.
But all they can do is shout that "MS ♥️ Linux", than just use Linux to make WSL without don't giving anything back to community.
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u/TeutonJon78 18d ago
MS is a big contributor to the kernel.
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u/global-gauge-field 18d ago
On the webpage, the leaderboard section keeps renewing with animation constantly. Is it just me ?
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u/TeutonJon78 18d ago
Hmm, just rechecked and it was doing it for me as well. Using a different link from the hamburger menu and then back to the leaderboard fixed it.
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u/sphericalhors 18d ago
Yes, I was going to mention this in my commend by decided to keep it short. They are famous for contributing big number of small commits to improve Linux compatibility with their products like Azure.
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u/TeutonJon78 18d ago
They definitely get more than they give, but that's true for most companies. But they do give back.
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u/killersteak 18d ago
a native MS Office port for Linux.
don't they hardly want to keep a native port for windows? they want web services.
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u/sphericalhors 17d ago
Web services even not capable of opening some files created by the native MS Office.
Also, MS Office for MacOS has been a thing for ages.
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u/Shot-Height-7194 13d ago
An airline I have seen, banned employees from using the desktop version so they use LibreOffice if they need s desktop version
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u/Edubbs2008 18d ago
Microsoft makes more money on Office sales than Windows, and ads, so yes, it wouldn’t hurt them, but in order to do that, you would need to support ALL distros, but because Linux is basically a hellhole, you have to support one package manager, then support another, make sure the Linux kernel version is updated, yeah, it ain’t worth it
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u/sphericalhors 18d ago
C'mon, pretty much every big software company managed to do this. I'm sure Microsoft also can.
People often make this kind of argument, but as someone who tried to setup a CI to build our software for Linux, Mac and Windows, I can say with confidence that the actual situation is quite different: setting up automated build for Windows is much more painful thing to do than to do it for any common Unix based OS.
It is easier to setup a CI for a f*king vibrator than for Windows.
To be honest, once I did it, I realized that I have no clue why other companies are OK with going trough this shit.
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u/Indolent_Bard 18d ago
Because they know that the payoff is worth it. With Linux, it isn't. It's getting there, but not quite yet.
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u/sCeege 18d ago
Ehh, I don't think they really have to support more than RHEL or Ubuntu to make this work, I really don't think they have to bother with distros that don't have significant enterprise support. Don't think it's going to happen regardless, but I don't think distro support is what breaks the effort.
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u/Curupira1337 18d ago
you would need to support ALL distros
That how it was in 2006. I should know, I was there.
But now Flatpaks and AppImages have solved that problem.
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u/Junior_Common_9644 18d ago
zomg... the sheer size of such an AppImage gives me shivers.
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u/Indolent_Bard 18d ago
And then it breaks if you try to use it on an LTS distro. Flatpak is the way.
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u/Additional-Sky-7436 18d ago
If MS was to really make a big push into Linux they probably would create their own proprietary package system. That would allow them to control the access to your computer that they want.
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u/sphericalhors 18d ago
There is even no need to make Flatpacks or AppImages.
It is not that hard to make RPM/DEB package for RHEL/Debian and it will most part of modern distros. I know this because I do it on my job. Then Arch and Gentoo guys will figure out how to use those packages for their dirstos.
If Nvidia, Slack, Firefox, Steam, Oracle and tons of other software companies figured out how to deliver their soft with classic DEB/RPM/xz archives (or installer in case of Nvidia), I'm sure Microsoft can do it to for MS Office.
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u/Indolent_Bard 18d ago
None of those are paid software. If you're downloading the paid software from their website, it wouldn't make sense to make it anything but a flat pack. The old way of doing it is asinine if you're trying to sell a commercial product on Linux.
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u/0x80070002 18d ago
How do they do with Edge?
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u/Edubbs2008 18d ago
Edge is crossplatform
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u/0x80070002 18d ago
That’s irrelevant for the issue “how do we deal with multiple distros”
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u/Edubbs2008 18d ago
The simple way to deal with that is require that Linux be standardized, no more multiple distros, instead we follow the update cycle for the kernel, we use approved Desktop environments, and a single package manager
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u/sphericalhors 18d ago
Linux is standardized. For ages. The standard is called LSB (Linux System Base).
We don't do this, but some time ago I tried to make one of RPM packages that we build on work to be compatible with everything, and following simple steps I was able to do it. After that I was able to extract it as archive and run that app on Ubuntu and Arch.
The argument about fragmentation is simply not valid.
You maybe face some "fragmentation" problems if you'd decide that you want to have a proper support of all kind of notification areas, global menus, global hotkeys, client side decorations, sound subsystems across all available DEs. But all those things are not required to make basic MS Office to work.
Edge is not more crossplatform than Office after all.
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u/adenosine-5 18d ago
Why? They make almost all of their money of their cloud services.
Windows haven't been their priority for a long time.
In fact they already do make more money off their Linux services, than from selling Windows.
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u/Additional-Sky-7436 18d ago
For Microsoft, Windows and MS Office are about controling the user's data now more than selling the product.
If you install Office on Windows, you automatically have to save all of your files on Onedrive. They want to control your data. But installing on Linux would limit that control. So MS still has ever incentive to make you use Windows, even if you get Windows for free. (Which is why they don't shut down pirated Windows keys.)
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u/adenosine-5 18d ago
Sadly, Open/Libre Office completely wasted the opportunity to replace MS Office.
While Microsoft spent 20 years by making the UI user-friendly, LibreOffice spent 20 years telling users they are dumb if they find it confusing.
And now MSOffice is packaged and integrated with all the other MS services, so no one can really reasonably replace it, without loosing all this integrated functionality.
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u/Additional-Sky-7436 18d ago
LibreOffice never had a meaningful chance to make a dent in MS's monopoly. Once a monopoly is set, it's almost impossible to break without government intervention.
For example, MS can't break Google Search despite putting their own search on your desktop right next to the Start Menu. You still open up your browser and go to Google instead.
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u/adenosine-5 18d ago
Today they dont, but I think they had - we used them at school, governments tried to use them... there was a genuine interest in not being reliable on Windows and Windows meant Office for most people.
But then MS came with Ribbon UI and OpenOffice was immediately obsolete - it was clear downgrade for any user, especially the less experienced ones.
Of course today that chance is long gone - MS improved their design and integrated with other services to such degree that any large organization basically cant switch.
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u/Indolent_Bard 18d ago
First of all, even if they made something that was better than Microsoft Office 20 years ago, vendor lock-in would have prevented them from being able to compete. Especially with Excel.
Second of all, you don't understand how hard it is to make a good UI. You know why the ribbon interface hasn't become the default yet? Accessibility. They're working on it, but with very limited resources.
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u/adenosine-5 18d ago
Oh I know how hard UI is - I am a programmer as well.
But the problem of Libre/OpenOffice was always a very loud minority that is used to their windows-98-style buttons. Everything else is "stupid" and "unusable", because that layout is "peak of productivity" for them.
As a result there have been pretty much zero effort over the years to come up with better UI - any attempt is immediately met with crowd of incredibly angry users who want to make sure no one will ever change "their" button layout.
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u/Indolent_Bard 17d ago
And as I said, the creators of LibreOffice don't care. They would love to make the ribbon interface default but it just isn't ready yet.
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u/ChilledRoland 18d ago
You can 100% save your files locally rather than on OneDrive.
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u/Additional-Sky-7436 17d ago
You *can*, if you are willing to jump through all the hoops to do that. Most people just stick to the defaults.
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u/necrophcodr 18d ago
Plenty of countries in which they cannot disallow this. They can try though.
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u/Additional-Sky-7436 18d ago
They don't have to "disallow" it. they just have to release a security patch.
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u/Single-Virus4935 18d ago
MS just can add checks or new OS APIs on every update which would break every new version on wine.
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u/necrophcodr 18d ago
This is one way in which they could do it, but is also legally questionable, depending on the jurisdiction they would deploy this to.
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u/Single-Virus4935 18d ago
The Problem is, that this way is slow and it is hard to proof. Wine isn't a supported platform and if they just add new font rendering APIs or use undocumented APIs (which is totally legal on their OS) I don't think there is much you can do. I am already surprised Google doesn't get fined for sabotaging Brave in YT
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u/MBILC 18d ago
How can they block it? Microsoft can determine what OS's their apps will run on?
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u/lord_pizzabird 18d ago
Sort of, by patching it out etc.
Now if they’ll do that.. idk. The thing is, they’re eventually going to need Linux support as government workstations globally move away from windows.
I think it’s coming either way. With or without Microsoft’s support.
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u/Additional-Sky-7436 18d ago
Office for Linux will be like Office for Mac.
Mostly Office... But also not in a few very specific ways.
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u/MBILC 18d ago
Countries moving away from Windows OS, are also moving away from most other MS products, period, so MS likely wont add linux support.
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u/lord_pizzabird 18d ago
I doubt that tbh. You can replace Windows, but Microsoft Office is absolutely essential.
Good work even finding people trained with Libre and Open Office. Every single person you hire will have to be onboarded and retrained.
It's just a mess.
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u/MBILC 17d ago
Certainly, it is a cost most companies never think of when they decide to move people to a new product, when they have been using the existing one for years / decades.
I have seen it before, especially in the ERP space, moving from one platform to a new one, promised as being better and all, and yet turns out to be clumbsy and not as effective.
People hate change, but so long as a company factors in training for the switch, people would need to learn to change.
What I see more likely to happen is most people get moved to Open source, while core people, say Accounting, will be allowed to keep Excel or other office apps for a longer period to transition over.
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u/Indolent_Bard 18d ago
Countries moving away from Microsoft aren't going to use Microsoft's Office Suite, especially if they want digital sovereignty.
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u/Pitiful-Welcome-399 18d ago
hwid is different from regular windows pcs
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u/MBILC 18d ago
The person said countries in which they could force MS to not block this working, which I do not see how they can force a company into support an OS, they do not develop for.
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u/lewphone 18d ago
I think MS will realease a desktop version of Azure Linux, then certify Office 365 to run on it.
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u/fat_kaiju 18d ago
i will never understand the severe conflict of interest with certain members of the open source community and its hellbent insistance on using the site owned and operated by the man who went around seig heiling and openly -- not to mention blatantly -- messing with the government in numerous countries.
Particularly when the platform is geoblocked; thus preventing a huge amount of people outside of the US form ever getting to participate in the first place.
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u/okktoplol 17d ago
They probably used Twitter before the acquisition by Elon Musk and are too bothered to switch to some alternative.
I hope people start switching tho, Elon is cracking down on the alternative frontends that let you view posts without an account and that's hella annoying
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u/Realistic-Gas-8720 18d ago
Sorry but I need context. Thank you for understanding
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u/Hugogs10 18d ago
i will never understand the severe conflict of interest with certain members of the open source community and its hellbent insistance on using the site owned and operated by the man who went around seig heiling and openly
Because there is none. The actions of musk are irrelevant to the "open source community", as if you could even encapsulate everyone under some nebulous umbrella. There's certainly people who are part of this community who hate musk, but that's not really relevant to the community at large.
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u/Far_Calligrapher1334 17d ago
I will never understand the members of open source community advocating for the use of the circumvention tools made by even bigger Nazis, either.
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u/Sirusho_Yunyan 18d ago
As much as this is cool, using products from a company that blatantly and flagrantly violates the ODF standard while stating in their literature that they comply to open standards, yeah they can jump.
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u/NatoBoram 18d ago edited 18d ago
Mirko Brombin ([@brombinmirko](https://x.com/brombinmirko)), the founder of Bottles, shared an exciting update on bringing Microsoft Office 365 to Linux.
In [this tweet](https://x.com/brombinmirko/status/2102863875767152962) from September 23, 2026, he noted that after fixing some last-minute issues, Office 365 should be available for public testing within another day.
He shared screenshots showing the setup process, including installing a specialized runner and the Microsoft 365 Apps installer itself.
The community response has been enthusiastic.
- Vague attributions and overgeneralization of opinions
- Canned emphasis on notability, attribution, and media coverage
Users praised the work, expressed eagerness to try it, and thanked him for making the desktop Office suite more accessible on Linux without needing virtual machines.
- Vague attributions and overgeneralization of opinions
- Rule of three
- Lexical diversity/elegant variation
- Negative parallelisms
Some asked practical questions—whether the full suite including Teams would work, details on activation, or what specifically required custom Bottles configurations beyond standard Wine.
This effort highlights ongoing open-source progress in running Windows applications smoothly on Linux.
- Undue emphasis on significance, legacy, and broader trends
- High density of "AI vocabulary" words
- Avoidance of basic copulatives ("is"/"are" phrases))
Brombin emphasized that early components were already visible but not yet ready for use, promising a proper guide once everything is polished.
The thread reflects growing interest among Linux users who want reliable productivity tools while staying in their preferred environment.
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u/Realistic-Gas-8720 18d ago
Yeah... 200 words minimum..... I couldn't even write essays. Btw the prompt was "expand this to 200 words: Fuck microsoft, we, the linux users would love more people from diverse backgrounds. Microsoft might fuck around and break this, so that's that. Libreoffice is right here, so... Maybe people will switch to it? Some people will absolutely hate this is in a fork but not in the mainline wine, but it may get upstreamed. Also, maybe we will have flexibility in using corpo microslop stuck to our face, for jobs"
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u/Bulky-Bad-9153 18d ago
Not being able to type 200 words (a requirement I don't see anywhere in the rules, and that someone else says is actually 200 characters) is embarrassing. Don't offload literally every single ounce of effort to a fucking AI.
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u/JockstrapCummies 18d ago
Dude why all the hostility? Voluntary cerebral atrophy via uninhibited reliance on generative pre-trained transformers is the new hotness! /s
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u/Realistic-Gas-8720 18d ago
My bad about the AI, but i literally couldn't post without putting 200 words in a description. Provided, i wanted to just give the link of the tweet for y'all.
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u/MairusuPawa 18d ago
We didn't even need a link to a neonazi website, you realize that?
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18d ago
[deleted]
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u/NatoBoram 18d ago
The crowd I hang out with does shit on Elon Musk at every opportunity. You should try with your friends, it's very fun to go "eww, a Nazi Mobile" in public when there's a cybertruck.
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u/Smart_Advice_1420 18d ago edited 17d ago
Maybe great for macro users. But without the need of macros, i don't see an advantage over libreoffice.
And i even use that in collaboration with win/mac using partners in my accounting business.
EDIT: looks like i'm heavily biased and didn't even realized it. Appreciate the reality check of you guys. We use those tools for accounting stuff like calculations, documentation, correspondence, budgeting, reporting, invoicing, contracts and so on. I have no experience outside of writer and calc.
With MS fonts and style compatibility, collaborative work with external partners, government and companies on documents, even presentable documents for clients, is perfectly compatible on our workflow. But yeah, 2-3 years ago we also regularly had some layout differences.
But if it doesn't suit your workflow, it's not the tool for your job.
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u/ProductIntegortion 18d ago
Many business situations aren't that forgiving. When I've done freelance work I've often been turning in Word or Excel docs to my customer and I needed them to work 100%. All functionality, all formatting, exactly as I built it. That's not feasible with libreoffice.
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u/HomicidalTeddybear 18d ago
It's frequently not feasible with microsoft word either, I frequently run into issues at work with formatting or compatibility issues between windows, mac, and online versions of word. It's very frustrating.
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u/LordPeasley 17d ago edited 17d ago
Not my experience of MS Office at all. In my workplace we only use MS for stuff that doesn't matter because it is so inconsistent.
Anything critical is a PDF. Also anything that faces customers, vendors, or external parties. We need to be confident they will see the document exactly as we sent it to them
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u/researchisbae 18d ago
That might work for basic use but I work in an acedemic lab and I need perfect compatability when sending word docs or powerpoints to other people. For example, embedding movies in a slide deck with animations is a common need and is not compatible between Microsoft office and any other office suite that I have tested
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u/Exernuth 18d ago
Same. In academia you deal with lots of collaborators/author who can't be bothered by (missing) compatibility.
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u/enemyofaverage7 18d ago
Same in legal - anything that won't render perfectly in someone else's Office 365 setup is a non-starter.
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u/KoldPurchase 18d ago
is not compatible between Microsoft office and any other office suite that I have tested
I'm anxiously awaiting the public release of Euro Office.
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u/MBILC 18d ago
For serious users like Excel, asking someone to switch to LibreOffice is like asking a lifelong Apple user to switch to Windows...
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u/Junior_Common_9644 18d ago
But if your life is in Excel... is it a life worth living? Sounds awful. But not because Excel specifically... just spreadsheets in general.
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u/MBILC 17d ago
Well in plenty of professions it is required, it is what some industries were built on. Sure, you can move things to a database system and design a UI for it, even use Excel as an UI, but think for many people, Excel has been there for ever and they know it.
I do feel you, I hate excel and barely use it.
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u/IllEntrepreneur5679 17d ago
important for scientist when publishing in journals in office formats or when you send the manuscript or Excel to collegues you can not afford to have even 1 line mismatch
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u/LordPeasley 17d ago
You really should be sending that kind of thing as pdf or odt, ms office formats are inconsistent between different versions of office, or even the same version on different platforms.
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u/sphericalhors 18d ago
A lot of people in our company use Linux, but there was one time when we needed to create a presentation using corporate PPTX template that was not working in LibreOffice or web version of MS Office.
Like there are still cases when there is no way around.
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u/bawng 18d ago
I use LibreOffice for work, but everytime we share Word or PowerPoint documents between LibreOffice and the Microsoft apps, there are various small layout changes.
Nothing big, but enough to make it extremely annoying, and it makes it impossible for presentations or documents where it's important it looks good. (I.e. mostly external stuff).
Excel sheets usually work better though. I guess there's less layout consideration there. I don't ever work with complex macros though.
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u/xgunterx 17d ago
My wife who uses MS Office daily for work is happy to use WPS Office and OnlyOffice on Linux, but refuses to use LibreOffice.
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u/He_Who_Browses_RDT 18d ago
More than 30 years later, just as the world (outside the US) is starting to move away from the MSOffice suite...
Not the best timing, but thank you! I'm sure many folks will find it useful.
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u/reddit_reaper 18d ago
How will they handle menus that show up in control panel for like Outlook lol
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u/ntcue 17d ago
Why would anybody use MS Office and why on Linux?
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u/arthursucks 15d ago
A lot of us use our desktop computers for work, and we need to be compatible when it counts. Fortunately, I've avoided this problem so far, but if it does come up, I'm going to have to make sure I have the tools.
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u/TheFightingFarang 17d ago
Many countries moving away from Microsoft in general. Maybe this is a little stepping stone?
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u/sleepingonmoon 18d ago
Aren't Office patches distributed through Windows Update? How will they handle that?
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u/MeLThRoX 18d ago
I just started using libreoffice and it works great. For collaboration i use nextcloud with collabora and it also works great. I see no reason to use ms-office anymore and thats also great.
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u/Conaz9847 18d ago
I’m good especially after the new patent theyve announced.
I’ll stick to libre thanks.
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u/biffbobfred 17d ago
It took me a while to get this. Especially since I use homebrew on a Mac and it has “bottles”
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u/Shot-Height-7194 13d ago
That means, they managed to crack the undocumented windows functions Microsoft 365 uses for licensing, which wine refused to implement https://www.codeweavers.com/support/forums/general/?t=26;forumcurPos=50;msg=286876
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u/GraveDigger2048 13d ago
yo dawg i've heard you like telemetry and obtrusive ads so we've ported o365 to linux so you could slop while copilot slops xD
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u/TCB13sQuotes 18d ago
Finally someones takes Office as a serious thing that people really need and not something that can be replaced with bullshit alternatives.
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u/arthursucks 15d ago
I wouldn't exactly call the alternatives to Microsoft Office 'bullshit'. They may not be a one-to-one, but I've used them professionally for over ten years.
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u/TCB13sQuotes 15d ago edited 15d ago
There are some very decent alternatives, but they’re all alternatives. LO is the biggest offender as a bullshit alternative, they’re trying to be another Microsoft by creating their own parallel universe around the way they implement the spec… making the problem even worse.
If they were really worried about being a serious alternative and getting close to 1:1 they would copy MS Office behaviors where the spec isn’t very detailed or accurate instead of endlessly bitching about it.
Let me give you an example: the default spacing between bullet points ins’t in the spec and they’ve deviced to use a random value instead of following what Word uses. This is all good in theory but it also means that if you’re using LO to open documents made by other people that may or may not use MS Office you’re silently trashing those documents because the formatting won’t hold / things will be on different pages for different people. This is good for your professional reputation nor for your productivity.
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u/TheSodesa 13d ago
The Microsoft Office spec has not been public information for very long. It is no surprise that other implementations besides the one by Microsoft themselves are not identical.
It is good that there are true alternatives that have specifications not based on the one by Microsoft. This way we are less likely to end up dominated by a single corporation.
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u/TCB13sQuotes 13d ago
Not it’s not good because you’re creating more fragmentation and making everyone’s life harder for the people that want to move over. If you’ve to deal with inconsistencies you’re way less likely to stay or move, one destroyed document it’s all it takes to never look to LO again.
And it can become even worse long term, imagine you’ve got a couple of govts or large companies moving to LO and using it. Now you’ve created yet another group of users that are locked into another solution and can’t move anywhere.
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u/TheSodesa 13d ago
It is really Microsoft that should be blamed for the fragmentation, since they did not base the software they managed to force down companies' throats on an open standard, and because of the number of software developers in the world, it was not a matter of whether but when a competitor would emerge. This is exactly why so many PDF readers are buggy as well. The standard was behind an expensive paywall for quite some time.
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u/TCB13sQuotes 13d ago
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but by creating another standard you’re not making it easier.
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u/Euroblitz 18d ago
I love microslop
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u/Realistic-Gas-8720 18d ago
Anything to make people switch first
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u/krakenfury_ 18d ago
Uh but no. Not actually anything. Boundaries are good for us where MS is concerned.
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u/Brilliant_Simple_497 18d ago
ms office is the most used office suite on the plant with no real linux alternative though
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u/arthursucks 15d ago
I actually challenge this. I think for what most people need an office suite for, the alternatives are more than powerful enough. Where Microsoft really wins is in that very niche business environment.
Source: I've been using LibreOffice professionally for 10+ years.
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u/0x80070002 18d ago
Isn’t M365 just Office Web?
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u/arthursucks 15d ago
There is a really nice web version of Microsoft Office, but it is not feature complete for the desktop version. A few people really do need those deeper functions that you can't get from the web.
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u/academictryhard69 18d ago
As corny as it is to say this but I'm really loving whenever a new milestone is reached in the FOSS ecosphere.