Office 365 on the web works well on Linux if that has enough functionality for you. If not, the only way to get a modern version of the real Microsoft Office is in a VM. Older versions will run over Wine.
As far as alternatives go, OnlyOffice has the best reputation for file compatibility. I use LibreOffice and am very happy with it.
Avoid OpenOffice. It is really just an ancient version of LibreOffice.
Your best option would be to use onlyoffice. Not sure what you mean by copilot. Copilot is available in vscode, vim, jetbrains, all of which are cross platform. You can also try using bavarder if you want something like chatgpt.
I personally use a small tool called mods to access gpt 4 using an openai API key in my terminal, but this option is only great if you have a terminal heavy workflow.
Also, make sure to install MS Fonts. Otherwise there’s a good chance sharing documents with Windows users will mess up formatting. I learned that the hard way.
Try fmstrat/winapps it’s installation process is well documented and it works relatively well. In case you don’t need too much functionality (e.g. complex formatting/custom template/a ton of custom add-ons) the online version might work for you. There’s also a web app for teams you can find on flathub iirc. Betterbird also gives you a ton of options and with owl addin it handles exchange pretty well and also gives you access to the teams web app directly inside betterbird
Have you tried an oldie but goodie called winapps? It still works now and lets you use remote rdp to windows to show each specific program as a window on your linux desktop
I spun up a trial version of Windows Server and tried to get it working. It seemed to want a Domain environment and I didn’t want to go down that road. There probably is a way to do it without setting up a Domain but I didn’t feel like messing with it at the time.
LibreOffice or OnlyOffice for desktop apps (no, they are not Microsoft apps, but yes they use Microsoft formats and can edit and save Microsoft documents/spreadsheets/etc). OnlyOffice is the closest of the two to the Windows experience.
If you really aren’t open to using alternative software (which is strange given that you’re using Linux), then the web apps exist. I’ve heard they’re really close to the actual desktop suite, though I don’t have any interest in ever using them as we have very good free and open source alternatives available (see above).
If the web apps don’t cut it for you, then you can run the official apps in a VM, or maybe through WINE. Here’s the WINE DB page for Microsoft Office, which lists various Office versions and their level of compatibility through WINE.
Copilot will likely not be possible to secure on Linux in a standalone desktop app (unless someone somewhere hacked something together through Electron to use a web version). Another user said that Copilot is available inside Microsoft Edge, so I suppose you could install that, though I’d highly discourage that. Reliance on LLMs is quite frankly a plague to society, and often feeds incorrect, biased, or purely fabricated responses, as LLMs merely attempt to predict what word is most likely to occur next based on a set of training data, none of which was vetted for accuracy, racism, zionism, sexism, etc. LLMs like copilot do not have any form of intelligence, and do not understand what they are saying. I highly recommend you just use a search engine in your browser, because it’ll feed you the same info all the LLMs were trained on anyway.
OneDrive recently received native support in GNOME, so I think you should be able to access it in your settings under accounts/connected services (whatever GNOME calls it nowadays)? I’ve never tried to use it, so other people will know better than I will there, but it should be possible to use.
Idk if this has been proven, but I’m certain that the current desktop versions of Office apps are just Electron-style wrappers for the web versions. I switched from Windows to Linux about a year ago and have found the web apps to be perfectly sufficient
In my opinion the web apps are better. i work for two companies using their own IT setups; at both, the installed W10 apps suck. They get stuck and lag or struggle to scroll to data im searching etc. The web app always works as expected, assuming your internet is good
If so, they’re pretty good at covering it up. You can usually tell Electron apps from how they behave (mousing over any clickable UI elements turns into a hand on Electron but native apps usually don’t, etc.) but I’ve always thought that Office apps, including the latest, are native.
Its pretty clear that old Outlook is native and the new Outlook is Electron just based on how it feels.
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