So, at school we use the whole Office 365 suite for a myriad of tasks.
Teams is used as the main way to share exercises and lesson material, Outlook is used as the resident email service, and you’re expected to use OneDrive to store all/most of your data. There are some additional apps that require Windows, but beyond the office 365 suite they are all replaceable.
What I’m wondering is, what distro can run/access those apps without too much hassle and set-up?
I’m looking to do this on a HP probook x360, upgraded to 32 GB of ram. The only peripheral of note I’ve got is a Ugee drawing tablet, but I can use the openTabletDriver or their own on some distro’s.
See wubuntu, it has OneDrive client https://sourceforge.net/projects/windows-ubuntu/
do not run wubuntu
I have the same situation at work, where I’m actually the CTO and have the power to change that but… It’s been like this for two years before I came in and right now there are a lot of dependencies to fix. It’ll take at least a year to prepare tos switch away, it sucks.
Having said that.
I’m running kubuntu myself and use the web version of teams and office, which both are hilariously bad to the point where you really have to ask the question why people pay money for this shit.
Google is an evil company but at least their software works to a reasonable point. Teams and office365 and outlook are so bad that I could write a multi page bug list and that is ignoring the fact that its just so hard to get anything done. Everything requires extra clicks, teams call connection lost? Sucks to be you, you can’t simply reload like in Google Meet, you have to ask your client to include you again in the call which is just sad. Outlook go back to the previous message with the browser back button which is there for exactly jat reason? Yeaaahhh, sucks to be you, buddy. Just a few random design issues from a long, long list.
Fuck everything about Microsoft
Edit: teams requires chrome, video calls won’t work on firefox for the moment, causing a crash in some codec library
Try OnlyOffice
Have already before and would love to again but…
I want it integrated with next cloud, and it MUST have perfect compatibility with Microsoft Office.
The former, so far, has always been a hellscapr to setup, even with the help of developers.
I use the web version of all O365 apps, even Teams, and I also have a Windows VM in case I need the desktop apps for whatever reason.
Ya, this comment is way too far down. All 365 apps with within the browser. Problem solved.
Except it sucks…
You can run teams in linux. I don’t know if the same goes for Outlook, but I found that accessing the web version via portal.office.com was sufficient.
But I’d recommend the unofficial one from flathub. The official one has stopped receiving updates in 2022 in favour of the web app, which is what the unofficial one is.
You can also just install the pwa right from your browser (for both teams and outlook web)
Micro$oft LOVVVESSS Open-source… RIght?? right??
The non web app is probably just a web app and browser wrapped in one.
Like the “non” web app is on Windows and macOS, as well
For teams specifically I’m just using the web version with chromium. Installed as a chromium app so I have quick access to it and have it on my taskbar. Rest of Office 365 works just fine in any browser. (Outlook, SharePoint, Power apps etc) For OneDrive Sync you can use https://abraunegg.github.io/ which should work on most distros.
You don’t need Chromium as it natively supports Firefox and Firefox based browsers
Firefox would give me weird problems with teams in the past. Have not tried it in a while though. I’ll try it and if it works without problems now I’m happy to leave chromium behind.
That’s what we do at $dayjob, also.
Any distro should work just fine, so the typical three: Debian, Fedora, Arch, or something else. Gnome 46 supposedly added support for Microsoft accounts as well as onedrive in the Nautilus file manager, so you should be able to “store all of your data.”
Second GNOME. They have the best account integration.
And Thunderbird will soon have Exchange integration for Calendars, Mail etc. Until then you can use the Exchange addon.
Personally, I’ve had no problems whatsoever running the Office 365 apps needed by my school on Debian’s version of Firefox ESR. Aside from Outlook and Teams, I’m not asked to use them very often, as most assignments are turned in as PDFs, but when I have been required to use Word and Excel, I have had no problems.
Apparently GNOME 46 introduced support for Microsoft 365 accounts including OneDrive support in the file manager, so a distro that runs a recent GNOME version, such as Fedora or Ubuntu, may be your best option. But without that, you can still use a third-party project like onedriver.
I’d like to chime in that Gnome, KDE, Cinnamon and most other DEs support OneDrive log in, on some OS’s you might need to install the package, first. XFCE doesn’t support it OOTB IIRC
Office won’t run on Linux or through Wine (AFAIK), I’ve converted to using LibreOffice on both Linux and Windows, which has yet to give me any issues.
Teams, as part of O365, also doesn’t have a Linux app, however… with the (paid) Thunderbird addon Owl for Exchange, you can read+send Outlook emails; it also adds a Teams icon to your Thunderbird sidebar that acts as a link to the web client.
Thunderbird, by default, can only read from Exchange mailboxes, but can’t send from them. If you don’t want to pay, the developers are working to add full Exchange support as stock. (There are also less legitimate ways to get Exchange support, like cracking Owl, but out of respect for the addon dev, you’ll have to find it yourself)
Edit:
If you’re new to Linux as a whole, I’ve seen many recommendations for Mint (a Debian and Ubuntu derivative), but I’ve never tried it myself. I started with Debian since I wanted a stable system that wouldn’t break down by itself or something. It’s rock solid on my Framework 13 Ryzen.
As for a Desktop Environment (DE), you can’t go wrong with GNOME or KDE. I prefer KDE since I don’t like the “look” of GNOME and it’s more “Windows-like” (but still it’s own thing), but it’s really just personal preference.
Office used to work via Wine in the past (using older versions of Office), but the latest versions of Micr$oft Office is so badly written, it’s hard to setup and run office under Wine indeed.
I was wondering the applicability of Libre to the officeland as I haven’t really used either in a number of years.
On the DEs: I’ve been gnome based pretty much always, almost never used gnome itself, directly. Xfce is my workhorse. Recently tried & dig cinnamon. Am ready to convert for a few months, at least.
I’ve tried KDE a few times, always short-lived as I can’t abide lack of keystroke windows management (I’m guessing they have them & I never took the 5 minutes to learn them). Mostly tried years ago. It was heavy and made my trash PCs choke. Felt like chrome does now.
Ubuntu’s native DE I can’t stomach for similar lack of common keystrokes and bad colors (again, a few minutes to change & learn because something else probably put me off enough that I wasn’t interested). Corporate construction has to be pretty awesome to get me to want to use it. No corporations come to mind that fit that.
Any distro you’d like. Use the office / outlook stuff in a browser. I believe kde has a way to use onedrive in dolphin, though personally I would keep my data on my computer unless it is for a group project, just make sure it’s backed up. I’d also have a VM handy with the spice guest tools. It is good to have at least for when you have to hand your computer to someone who may be uncomfortable with linux. I would use debian on a school computer for the ludicrous stability, but use whatever floats your boat.
Any distro that can run Chromium / Chrome. And everything other than Teams will work even on Firefox.
Teams can be installed as a native app.
Teams works for me as long as I’m not taking calls, just have to switch the user agent to pretend to be Chrome (but only sometimes)
No distro can just do that.
Try crossover, which is said to have best Windows app support. But Microsoft is actively fighting it, on their apps.
Your school is very, very, very shitty.
Wine support of Office is horribly bad, so yea maybe only crossover can save us.
I’d suggest simply dual-booting windows and your choice distro. You’re going to be using Microsoft services either way, whether through the browser or native apps. Just use windows boot for school exclusively and have you’re onedrive and office there. and then personally use linux.
Any distro.
Use a Windows VM for things that are unavailable or don’t work well as a web app. The absolute easiest way to run a Windows VM is VMware Player especially if you use a stable OS like Debian or Ubuntu LTS. The built-in KVM hypervisor works fine too but it requires more work to setup a Windows VM with all the drivers, shared folder, etc. And it won’t have graphics acceleration of any sort.
I would go with the WRB apps for the office stuff and recommend Thunderbird as a client for outlook.
Outlook is a client. Do you mean Exchange?
Yes
Sorry, I tried to search it but to no avail. What are the WRB apps?
I meant web apps
When I had to use Office and LibreOffice wasn’t sufficient, I just had a Windows VM running. The web versions are hot garbage (or at least used to be 3 years ago and I doubt that’s changed). I’m not sure if there’s a direct way to mount OneDrive on Linux (rclone maybe?) but if there isn’t you could do that via a network share over the VM.
KMail can connect to Exchange mailboxes. KOrganizer might even be able to access the calendar from one, I don’t remember.
The web versions are hot garbage (or at least used to be 3 years ago and I doubt that’s changed)
It’s better, less hassle than run a VM just for that.
I’d rather take the hassle of doing initial Windows setup once than the hassle of continuously fighting against awful software.
continuously fighting against awful software
Arguably this is why some people don’t bother with a VM and use the web apps instead.