this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2026
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Mirko Brombin, the creator of Bottles, has got Microsoft 365 running on Linux. His posts on X showcase an installation that completes on a Windows 10 or 11 Wine prefix, signs in with his existing license, and launches at least one editor.

He achieved this using two things, an unreleased version of Soda and Bottles 67.4. If you remember, Soda is a Wine-based runner that facilitates easy running of Windows games and applications.

On first glance, what he posted might look like a developer-focused log, but these changes are the foundation of what full Microsoft 365 support via Bottles will one day hopefully look like.

The results of his work

Mirko was able to login into the MS 365 app using his credentials and was able to launch MS Word and use it. Of course that's not the only thing he got working; since two-factor authentication passed, the suite detected his license, and OneDrive integration was functional.

The memory footprint of the office suite was less than 500MB, so this should be light on your Linux system.

The build he is currently testing is 2608 (20326.20144), which he says is the last build the installer will offer for Windows 10 and 11. And before you get all hyped up, wanting to try this out on your computer, know that you will have to wait.

Soda 11.0-11 (error 404 for now) has no release yet, and the component catalog that ships with Bottles 67.4 stops at Soda 11.0-10. Even the long-standing community request for a Microsoft Office installer in Bottles is still open.

Do we need Microsoft 365 on Linux?

Till date, there's not been an official Linux desktop build of Microsoft 365, and seeing how Microsoft currently operates, I don't expect one to appear anytime soon.

What's been achieved here is remarkable. Once fully implemented, this will help draw in people into Linux, as many shudder at the thought of switching to the platform because their preferred office suite doesn't work here.

For context, CodeWeavers sells a paid Wine product, CrossOver, and its database still lists Microsoft Office 365 on Linux as "Installs, Will Not Run," last tested against CrossOver 26.3.0.

Which is why I hope the fix travels further than Bottles. Wine sits beneath every one of these projects, including Soda. So a patch that lands upstream reaches all of them at once, and you would not need a particular runner to get Office working.

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[–] Envidon@feddit.nl 116 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (4 children)

I really dislike microsoft office, but the unfortunate reality is that it is used everywhere and it is such a disadvantage not to have, onlyoffice works great for me but the risk of things not looking right when sharing with someone with office is quite big. So I really like this progression, needing to run a full windows emulation to get office is a pain.

[–] Pomal@sh.itjust.works 52 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

That sounds like malicious action from Microsoft versus parsing a well standardized and open format.

Edit: this is the equivalent of choosing violence and we shouldn’t accept msft into the open source community at this point.

[–] thanksforallthefish@literature.cafe 46 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

M$ have specialised in anti competive malicious actions for over three decades. It's baked into their culture

[–] adarza@lemmy.ca 9 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

dos ain't done 'til lotus won't run.

Inhales the nostalgia deeply. Aaaahhh !

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[–] crispbacon99@lemmy.zip 8 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Ask your job to provide a device that can run the microslop software

[–] MummifiedClient5000@feddit.dk 15 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Here's how that would go:

Envidon: I want a device that can run O365.

Job: We can certainly make that happen. Just hand in your PC to the servicedesk and they will install Windows for you.

Envidon: So I can dualboot Linux for actual work and Windows for slopwork?

Job: Hahaha, no. Linux or O365.

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[–] Envidon@feddit.nl 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

They did, and then I put linux on it, so I created the problem I guess. (But struggling a but with office every now and then is better than dealing with windows always)

[–] crispbacon99@lemmy.zip 6 points 3 weeks ago

Haha, I see. I wish I could use Linux as my work operating system but a separate device is as good as I can get

[–] unwarlikeExtortion@lemmy.ml 7 points 3 weeks ago

I'd like to hijack your comment for a quick PSA for today's lucky 10000, even though I doubt many of them hang around these parts of the web.

The compatibility issues aren't the alternative's faults. Rather, the cause is Microsoft playing dirty.

Microsoft Office silently breaks compatibility with its own self-made document format (the so-called "Open Office XML"). They made the public standard and switched to it around 2010, and yet they still sometimes just... stray from the standard.

Since most everyone uses MS Office, people's first instinct is to doubt the small player for being bad, underfunded, low quality or whatever else instead of doubting MS for playing dirty. The entire tactic reads like a slightly modified Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

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[–] myster0n@feddit.nl 54 points 3 weeks ago

I hope this never happens to me

[–] cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 51 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

This might be useful for some Linux users who want (but don't need) to run Microsoft 365 occasionally, but actually relying on this kind of hack is a terrible idea.

Once fully implemented, this will help draw in people into Linux, as many shudder at the thought of switching to the platform because their preferred office suite doesn’t work here.

I certainly hope this doesn't "help draw in people into Linux". It's sad to think about people and organizations switching to Linux on the basis of someone misleading them into thinking that relying on this kind of thing is a good idea because when it breaks it will give them a bad impression and they'll blame "Linux" instead of Microsoft (or Bottles or whoever told them it was a good idea).

When the lack of a Linux version of a specific proprietary program is the blocker preventing someone from switching to Linux, relying on a workaround which remains unsupported by the proprietary/adversarial software vendor is... a recipe for a bad time.

Even if this mostly works today, it is extremely likely that (either intentionally or inadvertently) Microsoft will break it in the future.

So, although I do see how this can be useful for some people when/while it works, in my opinion Linux and the world at large would be better off if this software didn't exist. I hope Microsoft breaks it sooner than later!

[–] vort3@lemmy.ml 43 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

their preferred office suite

Usually it's not "their preferred office suite" but "office suite they are forces to use at work". MS Office usage is high because of network effect, not because any other office suite is worse.

I use LO Writer for any document I write (or work with) myself and it's perfectly fine. The only reason I keep MS Office is that I need to work on documents other people write (or need to work with).

Of course there are people who actually prefer MS Office, but it's similar to Windows itself: most people did not choose it, they either don't know there is an alternative or are forced to use it for compatibility reasons (at work). It's rare that anyone actually "prefers" MS software.

[–] thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works 10 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

MS Excel is unfortunately still unmatched; and is literally the only reason why most people still use the MS Office suite.

[–] vort3@lemmy.ml 13 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

It's not like I want to argue, generally curious. What does Excel do that Calc doesn't?

I work with text a lot, so I'm good with Writer (or Word), but I rarely do anything advanced in Calc or Excel, for basic stuff Calc is fine. I really don't know enough to compare the two.

[–] InFerNo@lemmy.ml 6 points 3 weeks ago

It connects with olap, and it can scroll per pixel instead of per row/column, which is very annoying with large cells.

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[–] Windows2000Srv@lemmy.ca 25 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)

I guess I'm the only here, but after years of running LibreOffice, I still miss MS Office.

Don't get me wrong, I can do everything I need in LO, but MSO is still better imo.

Nothing is like Excel and it's macros (I know, old school, but I can't get macros as complete in LO). And I miss Word's "page layout" where you can just center a text to a page vertically. Details, but still things I miss.

[–] stylusmobilus@aussie.zone 11 points 3 weeks ago (8 children)

Excel is the one. They’ve tried but they can’t truly replace it.

It and perhaps Word are the two things the competition can’t really land a punch on

[–] whatstatersprecious@lemmy.world 12 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

I’ve tried a bunch of spreadsheet programs. They are all painful to use compared to excel.

Sure, you can type up some basic calcs in LibreOffice or Numbers or whatever, but none of these could replicate the stuff I do daily for work in excel unfortunately.

That said, the lack of suitable alternatives did get me to learn Python for personal use. And that opened up a whole new world for things I do at work too. Things that would have been a headache in excel are a couple lines in Python. It’s great (obviously very different use cases from typical spreadsheets)

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[–] Majestic@lemmy.ml 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Same. And LO cannot do everything MS office does.

It can do major things and Writer is probably 98% there (Calc much lower) but as an example of an obscure feature: Word can do nested tables and last I checked LO cannot. As a major feature Calc cannot do proper tables with headers and sorting and the opinion of the devs is to just use a database which for large sets is fair enough but I semi-often work with smaller sets where it doesn't make sense and I just need a quick CSV sort. I have also tried to convince not so computer literate people to switch to LO and some of them have missed the proper tables support and telling them to learn to use databases isn't an acceptable solution as many of these people are older and their needs are things like finances or lists of their collections of stuff.

Word's styling options are also just leagues ahead if you're preparing documents for the office it's just easier to get better looking results. Same with Powerpoint.

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[–] EatMyPixelDust@lemmy.blahaj.zone 25 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)

But why??? LibreOffice is great, isn't made by Microslop, and doesn't use that god-awful ribbon bar.

[–] Eyck_of_denesle@lemmy.zip 8 points 3 weeks ago

People can't tell their higher ups what software the company should use.

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[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 21 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I think people should instead work on alternative applications to have compatibility with the file format.

[–] SocialistVibes01@lemmy.ml 12 points 3 weeks ago

Adobe and MS don't play fair on that front too.

[–] HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org 8 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

I have a LaTeX file from 1993 in my archive dir that I can format and print at a whim. It is a technical manua from an uni research hardware project written in Spanish, initially on an ULTRIX or DEC system, and I converted it once to ISO 8859-1 encoding and once to UTF-8.

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[–] TheNextMuon@lemmy.world 19 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

My expectation is that MS will replace Windows with Linux within the decade with a Windows lookalike theme and Windows style desktop. They will run a Rosetta like VM to keep old apps running. It will be much cheaper, Linux can do anything that Windows can, with much less development costs. They might say that Windows needs at least 16GB RAM to keep that VM running smoothly, plus some new CPU and GPU to keep the hardware industry happy. They will still make it so that Office will only run on their version of Linux.

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[–] joranm1@lemmy.zip 16 points 3 weeks ago

If people want to run MS Office and Linux allows them to do so, that's a good point for Linux, whether it's good taste to do so or not...

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 14 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Yeah, no.

Tool suites like Photoshop, they don't bother for a Linux version (and it's historically grown, the original devs probably long retired).

But Microslop? They really don't want their products on Linux. As soon as it gains traction, MS will break it.

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[–] boaratio@lemmy.world 13 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Why would anyone want to run Office 365 on Linux?

[–] Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com 37 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] boaratio@lemmy.world 8 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

If your job doesn't provide you with a company issued computer, you should try to find another job. My wife works remotely, and her employer didn't give her a computer, so she uses her own laptop and I find that egregious.

[–] Zeoic@lemmy.world 11 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

All they said was work or school, they didn't say anything about it being for personal computers. Getting things like this working makes a business using Linux for their work machines even more viable than it already is.

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[–] Jackinopolis@sh.itjust.works 10 points 3 weeks ago

Overcoming one more barrier to entry.

[–] Mongostein@lemmy.ca 13 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

You know what? That was a great article. Well researched and not too wordy, so I didn’t get bored. If you skipped it and came straight to the comments, you should click it, Adblock or not.

There’s so much slop out here, we should let them know we like this.

Anyway, as for the content of the article… meh, I don’t care about Office but it would be good for Linux in general to have it working.

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 11 points 3 weeks ago

FUCK microsoft, btw

[–] JoMiran@lemmy.ml 11 points 3 weeks ago (11 children)

All I need is the ability to run Teams and Outlook on Bottles.

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[–] pineapple@lemmy.ml 10 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

windows forum instantly announces it's sloppy, confusing rebuttal. Microsoft 365 on Linux: Why the Bottles Claim Needs Caution

[–] SocialistVibes01@lemmy.ml 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Has Copilot "written" that bs?

[–] VanRado@lemmy.world 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It really did read like an AI output. I wouldn't be surprised if it was punched up by AI.

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[–] mlg@lemmy.world 9 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

If this was still like 2010 I actually would have thought this is pretty nice but office went to complete garbage just likee everything else MSFT has touched this past decade.

Even on windows I've seen random people using libre office instead.

The last time I opened excel it actually died trying to handle my copy paste of a simple list.

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[–] LeninsLinen@lemmygrad.ml 9 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Personally, I think this is good. Obviously most people here already use some libre alternative or just access this via the web or dual boot, but most non-computer savvy people are dead set with keeping to what they already use either because of work or simply being more comfortable sticking with what they know.

Plus, there's probably cases where the web versions aren't going to be viable. Kind of ironic that so many linux people simultaneously make fun of the ChromeOS workflow where everything depends on browser-based services while dismissing people who can't switch fully because needing the MS suite with "just use the browser version".

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] Bluewing@lemmy.world 11 points 3 weeks ago

Be gone! Foul Spirit! Take your Co-Pilot and leave this innocent place.

[–] SteveTech@aussie.zone 7 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

For context, CodeWeavers sells a paid Wine product, CrossOver, and its database still lists Microsoft Office 365 on Linux as "Installs, Will Not Run," last tested against CrossOver 26.3.0.

Office 365 does run in CrossOver, just poorly. They've also recently dropped support for it in CrossOver 26, and AFAIK CrossOver 27 won't be able to run it at all.

So it's good to know that Bottles has effectively replaced it.

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[–] laurelraven@lemmy.zip 7 points 3 weeks ago

Congratulations and condolences

.......more the latter than the former I think

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