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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[–] Rusty@lemmy.ca 6 points 8 hours ago

Let's try running some windows only viruses on Linux next.

[–] EatMyPixelDust@lemmy.blahaj.zone 23 points 18 hours ago (3 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 7 points 5 hours ago

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

[–] Paulemeister@feddit.org 2 points 3 hours ago

Make a presentation in libreoffice or onlyoffice, then switch to Microsoft PowerPoint and tell me the user experience, look and time taken is not way better. I like LibreOffice, but if Microsoft office was open source I would 100% use that

[–] MashedTech@lemmy.world 6 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Because people won't adopt LibeOffice just because you want it

Well I want it and I've adopted it, so...

[–] joranm1@lemmy.zip 16 points 17 hours 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...

[–] boaratio@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Why would anyone want to run Office 365 on Linux?

[–] Jackinopolis@sh.itjust.works 9 points 11 hours ago

Overcoming one more barrier to entry.

[–] Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com 36 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] boaratio@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago (4 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 22 hours 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.

[–] Hueristic_Autistic@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

This also makes it so people don't have to buy cheap microslop notebooks or tablets just for work or college. Also makes it so that partitioning doesn't need to happen.

[–] varyingExpertise@feddit.org 3 points 17 hours ago

They do. I have introduced Linux desktops as a choice for those that can live e.g. with the browser version of office and don't need our ERP client.

[–] Epp@lemmus.org 5 points 21 hours ago

I use my own Windows machine, because they're ubiquitous, but my employer pays the periodic Apple ransom for iOS application publishing to purchase a Mac for my work, because I refuse to buy Apple hardware anymore. Apple decides when you're done developing iOS apps with the hardware you buy from them, not you.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 4 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

My company issued me a computer with Windows just fine. Except for Office 365, everything else I do is much better to have Linux native on it. So they are perfectly content to help me run Windows, I still don't want to run windows.

I was expecting you to say just use it in a browser, which actually I do 99.5% of the time. However, just last week I had to boot into Windows because of being forced to work a powerpoint presentation in ways the online powerpoint simply won't touch. Similarly, I've heard people speak the same of Excel, but I haven't experienced that one personally.

Incidentally, booting into that Windows install, the updates took about 6 hours before it was happy. Between Microsoft and my work's endpoint management, it's a nightmare to try to maintain the work Windows load. I had a similarly neglected Linux laptop and it took about 30 minutes to chew through an even larger window of updates.

[–] Hueristic_Autistic@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Microslop has windows 10 and 11 for free as iso's on their site because the only thing people pay for now is the registration code.

I download the windows 10 iso, load it onto a cheap ass temu, knockoff SanDisk USB flash drive with impression and loaded it onto my tower......

Apparently it was the windows 11 iso but in the downloaded file of the windows 10 iso. So now there's just dog shit loaded on to my tower but not just any ol' dog shit, it's dog shit that's unable to be removed from my life.

[–] Mongostein@lemmy.ca 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day 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.

[–] SteveTech@aussie.zone 7 points 1 day ago (1 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.

[–] DegradationDenial@feddit.nl 1 points 4 hours ago

Bottles is just wine in a flatpak, if codeweavers is dropping support and other wine devs won’t support it, bottles won’t either.

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 20 points 1 day ago (2 children)

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

[–] SocialistVibes01@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 day ago

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

[–] HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org 7 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] LeninsLinen@lemmygrad.ml 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day 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 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] Bluewing@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago

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

[–] Envidon@feddit.nl 115 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (9 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.

[–] unwarlikeExtortion@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 day 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.

[–] Pomal@sh.itjust.works 50 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days 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 43 points 2 days ago (4 children)

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

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[–] cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 50 points 1 day 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!

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[–] mlg@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day 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.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 3 points 21 hours ago

Between libre and office in the browser, 99% of my needs are met.

Collaborating on a powerpoint however, it's very quickly 'powerpoint application only', whether I like it or not.

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[–] Windows2000Srv@lemmy.ca 26 points 1 day ago (19 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.

[–] deczzz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 16 hours ago

Feel the same. Also, LibreOffice has been in development in forever and the UX has barely gotten better. Think I will give onlyoffice a go

[–] Majestic@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 day 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.

[–] Hueristic_Autistic@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

LO can at least freely view Microsoft word formatted documents, which is a big deal because doctors and official documents are usually in the Microsoft word format and I'm not gonna go through the trouble of going through pirated versions of 365.

LO can get me through what I need it for but you're right about excel being ahead of LO. I think Microsoft Office on the pc vs Libre office on Linux is like word on pc vs word on Mac, "just almost close enough."

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[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 day ago

FUCK microsoft, btw

[–] myster0n@feddit.nl 53 points 2 days ago

I hope this never happens to me

[–] vort3@lemmy.ml 41 points 2 days ago (7 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.

[–] deczzz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 16 hours ago

I have love for LibreOffice Writer and Impress but it is nowhere near as polished as Word or PowerPoint. Used on Linux and Windows. I switched from Windows to cachyos on my work laptop. First I open Writer, I get lag when scrolling. Fix on arch wiki, cool, but still. The interface is a mess, i.e. the Paragraph Style panel doesn't scale and is pretty unusable with the tabbed Interface layout. Pinch to zoom doesn't work. Generally feels laggy and slow. Impress is also such a hassle to get shit done compared to PowerPoint, i.e. lack of good snap grids and guides.

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[–] laurelraven@lemmy.zip 7 points 1 day ago

Congratulations and condolences

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

[–] pineapple@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 day ago (4 children)

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

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