3

This past year, I got into Linux and I love it. As of right now, I am running a dual boot system with windows 10 and Ubuntu 16.04. I'm still in school so I need to keep the windows for Microsoft Office and Adobe Suites.

Up till now, the dual boot has worked well for my needs, but now I would like to somehow be able to use MS office when I'm using Ubuntu. (The open office and libre office change formatting and layouts and my professors get upset).

I read online and some people say to try the WINE approach, but I hear that is difficult and the install is often erroneous.

I was thinking installing win7 or win10 on a virtual machine and running office on that? Is there any way I can strip down the OS image to conserve resources? Any other ideas?

Computer Specs

Processor: i7-4510U @2.00Ghz, 2601Mhz, 2 Core(s), 4 logical processor(s)

RAM: 8 gb ddr3

Unallocated Disk Space: 50 GB which I'm willing to partition up for the VM

Thanks, ex080

ex080
  • 33

5 Answers5

2

Using a VM is probably a better way to go. It's more resource intensive, but more reliable and stable then WINE. It looks like you have the resources available to do this.

davidgo
  • 73,366
2

Late Post

I tried both. VM is the definitely the way to go.

I installed office 2013 using Wine. The task was difficult in itself. At the beginning, MS Word seemed to work well. But, when I tried to add an equation, it threw error. It happened with lot of other things. Similar with Excel. Using Office on wine demands lot of work; still it won't work fully well.

Next, I used virtualbox and installed office 2016 on Windows 7 allocating 2 GB RAM. It works perfectly.

Sagar Adhikari
  • 121
1

Checkout wineapps-org/wineapps. It allows you to installer a Windows VM (running under KVM) with Docker, and then have the Office applications run on your desktop like they are native applications.

Also checkout dockur/windows to run Windows inside a Docker container.

robertspierre
  • 750
0

VM's are great for testing software and for playing around, but for day-to-day work it gets to be a bit inconvenient. I have no direct experience running MS Office in WINE, but to my knowledge, it works well. If you're willing to spend some extra money, there's a paid product called Crossover Office (from Codeweavers) that is supposed to make the configuration easier. I have no experience with that either, but it might be worth checking out. I see that they have a trial version available.

Charles Burge
  • 2,180
0

If you are only using Linux command line applications (i.e. no GUI) I would suggest going the other way around: install Ubuntu on Windows 10 instead

You would get a true Ubuntu userspace, and access to the documents you have on Windows. Speed-wise, is definitively faster than emulation, and it is relatively easier to install.

That being said, if you need a GUI application on Linux, this works, but not nearly as well as I would like it before endorsing it.

aprad046
  • 141