9mo ago

Question: If windows is required, what distro do you recommend?

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.

Edit: Thanks guys!

User helpimnotdrowning recommend Mint! This'll be my first real daily foray onto Linux, so it's definitely a good option. I'll also have a look at Gnome Vs KDE. I've been looking at KDE in the past, but gnome is definitely worth a peep as well.

User BearOfATime, thanks for giving the software name that allows for a seamless VPN transition! I'll also look into the win 10 LTSC. Not sure it's a right fit, but it's always fun to learn more!

As a couple of you recommend, there seems to be a teams flatpak to download, so I'll have a look into that!

Finally, I'd like to thank y'all for the useful and helpful answers! Many of you said to try the webapps, so I'll be doing that! My current plan is to use VMWare (alt is Vbox. VMware works (and looks) better) and try to actively use a mint VM. Not sure If I'll be able to stick to it, and not unknowingly switch to windows, but having it as a starting app should solve a couple issues. Slower start times, sure, but that's not the worst. Your advice is very much appreciated! It's given me a good confidence boost to start. Thanks for that :D

87 comments

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.
  
  Micro$oft LOVVVESSS Open-source.. RIght?? right??
  
  You can also just install the pwa right from your browser (for both teams and outlook web)

365 admin here. Use whatever distro you want and just use the web versions of Office apps. They've been greatly improved and are nearly identical to their desktop counterparts. Especially if you're leaning heavily into OneDrive/Sharepoint.
- This is your answer, OP.
  As a backup you can have a VM with Windows and the full apps if you need them (like Access for instance).
  
  How good are VMs at booting a physical partition?
- I always find 365 word does not format correctly particularly with tables and text.
  
  Format your document? Format your expectations. Fuck you, that will be $35/mo. -Microsoft, probably
- I often use fields, so I have to go back to desktop Word eventually to add them in. 🥲
  Users only use a fraction of the feature set but everyone uses a different fraction 😂

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 or abraunegg's OneDrive client.
- 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

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...

I use Fedora 40 workstation (Gnome) , run everything (Outlook, OneDrive, etc.) on browser, Teams as a FlatPak, and use Only Office for Excel, which I then upload to One Drive.
So far it's all worked like a charm.
- You can also use OneDrive on the native file explorer if you sign into GNOME with your Microsoft account
  
  Sign into Gnome with your Microsoft account
  I think I just had a stroke
  
  Yeah, that too, but for my work account that didn't work for some reason, so I just use it over a browser.

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.
- That's what we do at $dayjob, also.
- https://github.com/IsmaelMartinez/teams-for-linux
- 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.

I would highly recommend against installing a pirated version of Windows like BearOfATime suggests (at least via the second link he provided) - it could cause trouble for both you and your school.

I would go with the web apps for the office stuff and recommend Thunderbird as a client for outlook.
- Sorry, I tried to search it but to no avail. What are the WRB apps?
  
  I meant web apps
- Outlook is a client. Do you mean Exchange?
  
  Yes

Install the user Flatpak for Teams
Log into your OneDrive online account, use the file manager plugin for the files
Use any mail client you like for the e-mail, Thunderbird for example works fine
Use the web version of Office, sadly
- The web version of office is very bad and mostly unusable. You can supplement it with libreoffice but that sounds like it isn't an option.
  
  In my experience it's most of the installed version of Word, Excel and PowerPoint. It's leagues above Google Docs.
  While the web suite is not as feature rich as the installed version or as LibreOffice, I've experienced some compatibility issues between LibreOffice and MS Office. (but most importantly, their school requires MS Office)

So I'm confused. Wouldn't you want Windows? Also outlook can be replaced by Thunderbird.
So basically I see two options. First, if your device has 4 or more cores and 16gb of ram you can run Windows in KVM. If that isn't the case you need to pickup another device or not use Linux.
- I mostly want to switch since it feels better. It's a first big step into becoming independent from Microsoft, and I don't like the way they're going with LLM's among other things (I.E. totally oblivious of any security issues or broken code until the internet/EU spanks'm for it)
  The main reason though, windows 10 has ShapeCollector.exe to help windows learn your writing style. Windows 11 removed that, and just didn't replace it with anything. Really irks me that.
  In terms of thunderbird, school needs to grant permission, which I did ask for. Don't think they've granted it though.
  
  Why do you need permission to use Thunderbird but not Linux? It seems a bit weird.

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 that can run Chromium / Chrome. And everything other than Teams will work even on Firefox.
- 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)
- Teams can be installed as a native app.

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.

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.

None of those things you've mentioned require you to install something to your system. Outlook has a website which works perfectly fine on Firefox, and you can access OneDrive on web. As for Teams, I've had varying amounts of luck with the web app, but I think that's more to do with my myriad browser addons than my system? I dunno though
- I exclusively use teams on the web on Rocky. Firefox, Chrome, and edge all work for me.

From all the comments it looks like it's quite a challenge to go native Linux.
One option, run a VM using KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine, native to some distros).
You can install Windows IOT LTSC (Long-term Servicing Channel), which receives only security updates 2x/year, no others. It also doesn't have all the bloat. It's what I run for daily use.
Win10 LTSC. It gets updates 2x/year, has very minimal bloat.
Windows LTSC Downloads, don't forget to grab the key.
Then get O&O Shutup to reduce bloat even more (mostly just to limit telemetry on Windows).
And you can permanently license it using Microsoft's own scripts. - Scripts on Github.
At one time you could directly launch apps in VMs using SeamlessRDP, I'm not sure if that still works or if there's something new.
As others have said, wtf is wrong with the school - requiring OneDrive? FFS
- Only do that if you have 16 or more GB of ram. Also Win 10 standard is fine or pro if you want AD.
  
  Pro gives you Group Policy, which is essential for controlling things any more (especially telemetry and automatic updates, for example).
  And yea, gonna need some ram to run a VM. Linux may run OK on lesser amounts, but even a VM of Windows can get pretty hungry. It'll run ok with 8 allocated to it, and it'll slog along with less, but still run.

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.
  
  It is pretty is to setup a Windows VM

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 your onedrive and office there. and then personally use linux.

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.

I'm using arch Linux. But for the most part I don't think it really matters.
Flatpack Teams, and web version the rest of the M$ software.
It works well enough. Though web versions of M$ software is weirdly limited for reasons I can only understand as arbitration.
For instance very large excel files don't load in web excel, and iirc you cannot insert formulas in web word.

Micro$oft loves Open-source... Well, .. not unless they need to support it, instead of ripper off all the open-source developers.

As most others said, pretty much any distro is fine. You have a powerhouse of a laptop, so running a Windows VM inside of KVM would pose no problem, but if you can, I'd advise to try avoiding a VM.
Teams is basically just a web app masquerading as a classic application using Electron, so you can just use Teams inside of your browser of choice with minimal features missing (the only one I noticed was green-screen, but I didn't care that much about it).
Even if you use a lot of Office, you'd be surprised at how similar LibreOffice is to MS Office. The UI is a lot worse IMO, but 99% of the features are there. Tables in Word/Writer seem to behave quite a bit differently for one which can get annoying, along with the usual problems of switching from one UI to another. As for formats, LibreOffice supports MS Office extensions. There are some differences in rendering because of what I see as MS bullshit, but it's limited to padding, font size, etc. (and missing fonts), but if your teachers are open to it you can easily send them the original as well as a PDF reference just in case.
I didn't use Office web apps for a few years now, but when I did they were missing a lot of features (more than 80% i'd say), but others say the situation has improved, so you can try that in your browser of choice like Teams.
If you need the desktop Office apps, you maybe could use Wine or something to run them on Linux, but I don't have any experience with that so I don't know how well they behave or how the setup is.
You could easily run a VM with KVM with the specs you listed. Personally I find the installation of KVM and Windows VM creation a bit convoluted, but there are great tutorials availiable online and it's a one-time ordeal of maybe 15-45 minutes (including VM creation, depending on how fast you want to go/how familiar with the Linux command line you are), so not that bad. Utilizing virt-manager limits command line use to just the first setup of KVM. Installing the VM can be done graphically using virt-manager.
I don't know how drawing tablet passthrough compatibility in KVM is (probably great though). RedHat drivers enable shared clipboard and dragging files over between the host and VM, so even that should be quite painless if you choose to go the VM route.

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. With that said I've personally migrated from VMware to KVM in anticipation that Broadcom who recently purchased VMware will turn their software to shit or start asking for more money, or both.

Linux won't give you much more privacy in your case. I would recommend storing and manipulating your personal data on a separate Linux machine and please don't store anything except what's absolutely necessary on OneDrive. Though if you can't afford a separate machine, you can run Linux to get at least some improvement. I think the only DE that has good MS cloud support is the latest version of GNOME so you need a distro with that DE. It can be Ubuntu 24.04 (or something based on it) or a rolling release. The last one may be more difficult to use in some cases but idk any other somewhat user friendly options.

Microsoft pays extra attention to Ubuntu LTS and RHEL. Not my first choices, but in particular you'll see stuff like AAD auth on Azure VPN supported on Ubuntu LTS. There will also be some work going into proper Intune support, if that matters.
I would prefer Fedora or Debian for a more stable environment, and use Arch at home, but we have to keep interoperability in mind sometimes.
Another thing to look into, and I really hate to since Broadcom bought them, but you can run Windows inside VMWare, and use unity mode to break individual windows out into your DE. Beware of the new licensing.
- Why wouldn't you use KVM?
  
  It really depends, but generally, I want to use as much Linux as possible, and for me a bigger part of that is the UI than the hypervisor.

Basically it doesn't matter if you can use the webapps.
Mint is the best traditional noobie distro, while I would suggest Silverblue, if you just want to use a robust system that requires far less maintenance effort than a traditional distribution with limitations that may are may not affect you at all.

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 always go for Linux desktop at a job. Office 365 runs just fine in a browser. Not ideal, but MS will never give up teams to a Linux Installer again. They took down the 1 they had which wasn't great but still worked

See wubuntu, it has OneDrive client https://sourceforge.net/projects/windows-ubuntu/
- do not run wubuntu
  
  Why? It's just a customized kde with teams, rclone for onedrive and some other little tweaks, nothing dangerous

Office 365 runs out of the box on Crossover.

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