LinOffice - Microsoft Office launcher for Linux

LinOffice enables you to run Microsoft Office applications in Linux. In the background, it runs a virtual machine with Windows and Office installed which is then accessed via FreeRDP. LinOffice's aim is to be a "1-click" setup for Microsoft Office in Linux.

By default, Microsoft Office 2024 (Home & Retail) is installed, containing Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Onenote and Outlook. If you have a Microsoft Office 365 subscription you can log in with your Microsoft account and it should upgrade from 2024 to 365.

The project utilises Winapps, Dockur/Windows, FreeRDP, Podman, and Qemu. You can run LinOffice alongside WinApps - all the names and RDP ports have been changed to avoid conflicts between the two.

Screenshot

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Features

• Automatic non-interactive setup script
• Run Microsoft Office apps as if they were native Linux apps
• Office apps have access to /home folder and Linux clipboard
• Automatic suspend of the Windows container when inactive, resume when starting an Office app
• Automatic deletion of Office lock files (like ~$file.docx)
• Force time sync in Windows after Linux host wakes up from sleep, to avoid time drift
• International support: Automatic detection of language, date format, thousand and decimal separator, currency symbol, keyboard layout etc. in the Linux system to apply the same settings to Windows (so that you don't have to deal with mm/dd/yyyy if you're not American!). Also avoids geo-restrictions for the Office installation. The time zone is set to UTC for simplicity and to avoid issues with timestamps when saving in the /home folder
• Script to install updates for Windows and Office.
• Tidy Quick Access pane in Windows File Explorer

Planned features

Planned features

• Option to deny network access to VM (after Office is all set up). The first aim is to avoid Windows and Office "phoning home", which could perhaps be done by setting the Windows DNS server to IP that doesn't work. It would also be nice to completely stop all non-RDP network traffic to reduce security risks for users who don't keep their Windows VM updated
• GUI
  • Install wizard replacing setup.sh
  • Launch Office apps once installed
  • Set display scaling
  • Explicitly set regional settings, keyboard layout, time zone (e.g. for Excel's =NOW() formula) for the VM
  • Quick actions e.g. run Windows Update, open Powershell, open Office Language Settings, clean orphaned lock files from /home folder, enable/disable network access for Windows
  • Troubleshooting e.g. recreate .desktop files (setup.sh --desktop), RDP & Office check (setup.sh --firstrun), reset FreeRDP and container (linoffice.sh --reset), reboot Windows VM, general health and dependency check
  • Uninstall (with or without removing the container and its volume)
• Deliver as Flatpak or AppImage, which would have these benefits:
  • Bundles dependencies such as FreeRDP and Podman-Compose; only Podman would need to be installed on the system already
  • Installation and uninstallation more straight-forward for Linux beginners

Nice to have but lower priority

• ARM support (should be possible as both Windows and Office have ARM versions)
• Support for non-core Office apps (e.g. Access, Publisher, Visio)
• Support for older Office versions (e.g. 2016, 2019, 2021)

Comparison with other options to run Microsoft Office in Linux

	Linoffice	Winapps	Windows VM	Crossover	Wine
Latest supported Office versions	2024 (installed by default) and 365 (upgrade after login)	All up to 2024 and 365	All up to 2024 and 365	All up to 2016, 365 may or may not work (List)	All up to 2016 (List)
Office components	All, but installed by default: Excel, Word, Powerpoint, OneNote, Outlook	All: Excel, Word, Powerpoint, OneNote, Outlook, Access, Publisher, Visio, Project	All: Excel, Word, Powerpoint, OneNote, Outlook, Access, Publisher, Visio, Project	Excel, Word, Powerpoint	Excel, Word, Powerpoint
Bugginess	🐞 Issues when moving or resizing Office windows or when working with multiple open Office windows	🐞 Issues when moving or resizing Office windows or when working with multiple open Office windows	✅ No bugs, working just as Microsoft intended	🐞🐞 UI bugs, crashes, failing to save files, certain features may not work	🐞🐞🐞 UI bugs, crashes, failing to save files, certain features may not work, installation or activation may fail
Cost	Free	Free	Free	$60/€60/£60 for Crossover	Free
Activation with MAS	✅Yes	✅Yes	✅Yes	❌No	❌No
RAM & CPU use	🔴 Significant (Windows VM)	🔴 Significant (Windows VM)	🔴 Significant (Windows VM)	🟢 Modest	🟢 Modest
Integration into Linux	✅ App launchers ✅ File associations ✅ Access to /home ✅ Shared clipboard	✅ App launchers ✅ File associations ✅ Access to /home ✅ Shared clipboard	❌ App launchers ❌ File associations ⚠️ Access to /home* ⚠️ Shared clipboard*	✅ App launchers ✅ File associations ✅ Access to /home ✅ Shared clipboard	✅ App launchers ✅ File associations ✅ Access to /home ✅ Shared clipboard
Installation & setup	🟢 Easy: 1. Install dependencies 2. Run LinOffice installer	🔴 Complicated: 1. Install dependencies 2. Set up Windows VM 3. Install Office in VM 4. Create config file 5. Run WinApps installer	🟡 Medium: 1. Install dependencies 2. Set up Windows VM 3. Install Office in VM	🟢 Easy: 1. Install Crossover 2. Download Office installer and open it in Crossover	🔴 Complicated; installation and activation will fail without arcane workarounds**, no automatic creation of .desktop files

*requires manual setup, e.g. VirtIO-win and WinFSP or Samba when using Virt-Manager/Qemu, or Virtualbox Guest Additions for Virtualbox

**PlayOnLinux 4 has install scripts for Office 2016 and below that may or may not work

Installation

Requirements

All Linux distributions are supported.

Hardware requirements:

• Sufficient resources (the Windows VM is allowed to take up to 4 GB RAM, 64 GB storage and 4 CPU cores if needed). The script will check that you have at least 8 GB RAM and 64 GB free storage before proceeding.
• Virtualization support (using kvm)
• x86_64 CPU (ARM is currently not supported, although it would be possible)
• Fast Internet connection as you will need to download several GB from Micrsoft

Dependencies

Dependencies that need to be installed (they should be in the repos of most distributions):

• Podman
• Podman-Compose
• FreeRDP (v3)

How to install the dependencies

• Ubuntu & Debian: sudo apt install podman podman-compose freerdp3
  • make sure your repo has FreeRDP v3 is only available from Debian 13 and Ubuntu 24.04 onwards; in older versions you need to use backports or install the Flatpak version of FreeRDP (see below).
• Arch: sudo pacman -Syu podman podman-compose freerdp
• OpenSUSE: sudo zypper install podman podman-compose freerdp
• Fedora & OpenMandriva: sudo dnf install podman podman-compose freerdp
• Fedora Atomic: rpm-ostree install podman-compose freerdp, then reboot (podman is already preinstalled)
• Other immutable distros (e.g. OpenSUSE MicroOS, SteamOS):
  • Podman is hopefully preinstalled, check with podman --version
  • Podman-Compose can be installed via pip or manually installed in your /home directory
  • FreeRDP can be installed as a Flatpak, but make sure to give it permission to access the /home folder.

Some dependencies that WinApps requires, e.g. netcat, ipconfig, dialog, libnotify, are not necessary to run LinOffice.

Install

First, install the dependencies (see above).

Then:

1. Download this repo (e.g. release version or latest git version)
2. Unzip and save in a convenient folder (e.g. ~/bin or ~/.local/bin)
3. Make sure that setup.sh is executable (chmod +x setup.sh, or in Dolphin: right-click -> Properties -> Permissions -> [x] Allow executing file as program)
4. Run the setup (./setup.sh).

To do this with one command:

mkdir -p ~/.local/bin/linoffice && wget -qO- https://github.com/eylenburg/linoffice/archive/refs/heads/main.zip | funzip | tar -x -C ~/.local/bin/linoffice --strip-components=1 && chmod +x ~/.local/bin/linoffice/setup.sh && ~/.local/bin/linoffice/setup.sh

The setup.sh should do everything automatically but will take quite a while. You need to download about 8 GB in total and wait until both Windows and Office are installed. In my experience, on a modern laptop (2023 mid-range AMD Ryzen CPU) and with fast Internet (250 Mbps download), it took about 15 minutes all in (breakdown: 3 minutes Windows download, 8 minutes Windows install, 4 minutes Office download and install).

At the moment, the setup script is still EXPERIMENTAL. If it succeeds without issues, please share your system setup which will be very helpful in order to know where LinOffice works out of the box.

Notes on the Windows version

By default, Windows 11 Pro will be installed. If you want, you can also install Windows 10, which should be a bit snappier. To do that, replace VERSION: "11" with VERSION: "10" in the config/compose.yaml.default file before running setup.sh. Microsoft will end mainstream support for Windows 10 in October 2025, but after the installation you can use Microsoft Activation Script (MAS) to extend Windows 10 updates until 2028.

Unfortunately it is not allowed to redistribute Microsoft software, otherwise I would have just prepared a pre-made VM with Office installed, which would cut down the installation time and make this whole project much simpler. At the moment, the script downloads Windows, installs it into a VM, then downloads Office and installs it in the VM, as well as various other tweaks to integrate Office.

Uninstall

You can run the uninstall.sh to remove everything.

Where are the files saved?

If you want to manually remove the files:

• The self-contained folder where you have saved the linoffice.sh script.
• The appdata folder for temporary files is in ~/.local/share/linoffice
• The .desktop files (Excel, Onenote, Outlook, Powerpoint, Word) will be created in ~/.local/share/applications
• The Podman containers, which include the Windows VM, can be removed with podman rm -f LinOffice && podman volume rm linoffice_data

Usage

Starting Office applications

After installation, you should find the launchers for the Office applications in your app menu.

Opening Office files

You can open files from your file manager with Right-click -> Open with.

In the terminal

• ./linoffice.sh [excel|word|powerpoint|onenote|outlook]: runs one of the predefined Office applications
• ./linoffice.sh manual [msaccess.exe|mspub.exe]: run Microsoft Access or Microsoft Publisher, if installed (they are not part of the default Office version installed by LinOffice)
• ./linoffice.sh manual [explorer.exe|regedit.exe|powershell.exe|cmd.exe]: runs a specific Windows app in the Windows PATH
• ./linoffice.sh manual "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\SETLANG.EXE": like above, but for any application (here: Microsoft Office Language Preferences tool)
• ./linoffice.sh windows: shows the whole Windows desktop in an RDP session
• ./linoffice.sh update: runs an update script for Windows in Powershell
• ./linoffice.sh reset: kills all FreeRDP processes, cleans up Office lock files, and reboots the Windows VM
• ./linoffice.sh cleanup [--full|--reset]: cleans up Office lock files (such as ~$file.xlsx) in the home folder and removable media; --full cleans all files regardless of creation date, --reset resets the last cleanup timestamp

If you are using the terminal commands often, you might want to create an alias by running echo "alias linoffice='/home/user/.local/bin/linoffice/linoffice.sh'" >> ~/.bashrc && source ~/.bashrc - but make sure to adjust the username and path to where your linoffice.sh script is saved. This will enable you to run the LinOffice script from anywhere, for example you'll be able to run linoffice windows instead of navigating to the correct folder and then running ./linoffice.sh windows.

Office activation

You will need an Office 2024 license key or Office 365 subscription to use Office. During the first 5 days after installation, you can use Office without activation by clicking on "I have a product key" and then on the "X" of the window where you are supposed to enter your product key.

The Microsoft Activation Scripts (MAS) will also work if you have, let's say, trouble with activation - just run ./linoffice.sh manual powershell.exe from the script's directory to open a Powershell window where you can then paste the command to run MAS.

Display scaling

You can set the display scaling by modifying the value for RDP_SCALE in the linoffice.conf.default (before installation) or linoffice.conf (after installation).

Troubleshooting

Problems with the setup script

If the setup.sh fails, try running it a second time. Sometimes that does the trick. If your Windows VM installs successfully but Office doesn't seem to be installed, you can trigger a re-installation of Office using /.setup.sh --installoffice. You can also manually install Office by accessing your virtual machine through 127.0.0.1:8006 in the browser. If you have installed Office but it wasn't picked up by the setup script, you can let it check for Office again by running ./setup.sh --firstrun. If you need to re-create the .desktop files (app launchers) you can do it by running ./setup.sh --desktop.

If you can't get the setup to work, please create a bug report ("setup didn't work") with these information:

• The windows_install.log (in ~/.local/share/linoffice)
• The setup.log, setup_office.log, and setup_rdp.log (if they exist) in C:\OEM in the Windows VM
  • You can access the VM through via RDP with the command xfreerdp /cert:ignore /u:MyWindowsUser /p:MyWindowsPassword /v:127.0.0.1 /port:3388 or alternatively by accessing 127.0.0.1:8006 in the browser (password is MyWindowsPassword), although the latter method doesn't have clipboard sharing.
• Your system information (LinOffice version, Linux distribution, desktop environment, Wayland or X11, how did you install podman, podman-compose and freerdp?)

Window management

In my experience, window management can be wonky, particularly if you're using Wayland instead of X11.

Examples

• Using multiple Office documents/windows can be tricky. For example, opening an Office window might not open until you start it a second time and you may or may not get two windows then. Or, opening a new Office window might close already open ones. Don't panic - your documents are not lost. Just launch the latest Office window again and you should now see both the new one and old one. Sometimes, opening a new windows might also have the quirk that the focus is on the older Office window which is sitting in the background. The solution is to minimize the old one so that the focus is gone..
• Moving and resizing windows does not always work well, particularly on setups with multiple monitors. Most desktop environments use the shortcut "Meta or Alt + Left-Click" for moving a window and and "Meta or Alt + Right-Click" for resizing; this is a very reliable to move around or resize Office windows.
• Dialog boxes (commonly encountered when working with charts in Excel for example) spawn as new, separate windows, but they can sometimes appear behind the main window and at the same time block the main window until you close the dialog box.
• Dialog windows may also have a bad size, e.g. the "edit chart data" window in Excel often cuts off the "OK" at the bottom. The solution, again, is to resize the window using a shortcut like "Meta or Alt + Right-Click" in order to access the "OK" button.

I believe that these are FreeRDP issues. If it becomes too bad, you can try ./linoffice.sh reset to kill all FreeRDP processes and reboot the Windows VM - but be aware that you will lose any unsaved Office documents this way.

Wrong keyboard layout

Theoretically, this should be done automatically by the setup script but it might fall back to the US layout if it doesn't detect your Linux keyboard layout or can't match it to a Microsoft keyboard layout. There should be two ways to manually set the keyboard layout:

Option 1:

• In the LinOffice folder, open the config/linoffice.conf and find the row saying RDP_KBD="".
• Check this Microsoft resource to find the numeric code for your keyboard layout.
• Edit the line in the config file like these examples: RDP_KBD="/kbd:layout:0x0809" for the UK keyboard (it says (0809:00000809) in the Microsoft link), RDP_KBD="/kbd:layout:0x0407" for the German keyboard (it says (0407:00000407) in the Microsoft link), RDP_KBD="/kbd:layout:0x0414" for the Norwegian keyboard (it says (0414:00000414) in the Microsoft link).

Option 2:

• Access the Windows VM, either via RDP (./linoffice.sh windows) or VNC (127.0.0.1:8006 in the browser, password is MyWindowsPassword)
• Open the Windows Settings app and set your keyboard layout in there.
• Open the Command Prompt (cmd.exe) and enter: REG ADD "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout" /v IgnoreRemoteKeyboardLayout /t REG_DWORD /d 1 (this tells Windows to use its own keyboard layout and not whatever the RDP client uses)

Orphaned lock files

There is a strange issue that Microsoft Office will not clean up the lock files in the Linux /home folder. If you open, say, "Book1.xlsx" then Excel will create a file called "~$Book1.xlsx" which is just a few bytes in size and serves the purpose of "locking" this file so other users can't edit it at the same time. Normally these files should be deleted when you close the file, but this doesn't happen for whatever reason. The /home folder is mounted by FreeRDP and appears in Windows as a network drive accessed via RDP Drive Redirection (RDPDR).

LinOffice searches and deletes these lock files when the last Office process is closed. If this fails for any reason you can manually delete all lock files by running ./linoffice.sh cleanup --full.

How to hide these lock files in KDE's Dolphin file manager

1. Go to KDE System Settings -> Default Applications -> File Associations, then search for the mime type corresponding to .xlsx (in this case it's called application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet). Select the existing filename pattern (*.xlsx) and click - Remove and then click + Add and enter [!~][!$]*.xlsx. Do the same for docx and pptx, and, if you use them, odt, ods, odp, docm, xlsm and pptm.

(By default files starting with ~$ have the mime type application/x-trash. By making the above change, a file like "~$Book1.xlsx" will be seen as a trash file rather than a spreadsheet.)

2. Open Dolphin, go to Configure Dolphin -> View and check [x] Also hide backup files when hiding files.

("Backup files" in this case actually refers to all files with the application/x-trash mime type.)

Legal information

This project is licensed under the GNU AGPL 3.

The main script (linoffice.sh) is forked from Winapps, AGPL license.

The Windows VM is set up using the Dockur/Windows OCI container, MIT license.

Windows and Office are directly downloaded from Microsoft. This project contains only open-source code and does not distribute any copyrighted material. Any product keys found in the code are just generic placeholders provided by Microsoft for trial purposes. You will need to provide your own product keys to activate Windows and Office.