(solved) MS Office - best way to run this windows suite in Linux Mint?

[Bob M]

Guy’s & Gal’s,

I’ve been watching this thread with great interest and have come up with a couple of query’s of my own.

Firstly, I have had success with “Wine” and when that didn’t do the trick, installing “Winetricks” did. Both these programmes play well together and I have a good number of programs designed for Windows working fine. Now I see another program called PlayOnLinux has crept into the equation so I wonder if Wine, Winetricks and PlayOnLinux would play nicely together?

(A bit of a heads up (while I think of it) for those running “Office” programs and having trouble with spreadsheets. I have a couple of quite complicated Windows .xls spreadsheets containing Macro’s and Libre Office 5 opens and runs them fine, but they must be saved as .xls again if changes are made.)

Moving onto VirtualBox. I’m keen to give it a try, but I wonder if I have the resources to run it alongside Mint – ver18 Sarah – Cinnamon. Mem: 4 gig - CPU: AMD Dual Core 64bit?

So to summarise: I’m not sure that PlayOnLinux would work with Mint ver18 – Sarah, as it’s not in the Synaptic Manager, so advice on that would be appreciated and do I have sufficient resources to run VirtualBox?

Thanks for any advice

Bob

[themusicman55]

I appreciate this is a few months too late, but the following observations may help. I've been using Linux since 2010 in various guises - all Debian derivatives - but have now settled on Linux Mint Cinnamon. I run an international consulting business and my clients almost invariably expect me to use Microsoft Office - so for me it absolutely has to work, and work as near flawlessly as I can make it.

Over the years I have used Wine, Crossover, Virtualbox and Office 365 online. I conclude that for my purposes:
(a) Wine on its own is a non-starter. The set-up procedure is a pain in the backside; and various issues with 32-bit libraries and X11 have now got to the point where it's more hassle than it's worth.
(b) Even the latest version of Crossover does not work flawlessly with any version of MS Office. 2003 and 2007 were tolerable, but the moment one starts manipulating images in Word documents one runs the risk of crashes. Word, Excel and Powerpoint 2003 were more or less usable at a basic level, but for my business I need a whole lot more than "basic level".
(c) A Windows XP virtual machine in Virtualbox is my fallback of choice. Some of my projects are in locations where web access is at best unreliable, so offline solutions are my best option. I keep a Windows XP virtual appliance file as back-up and just import it whenever I need to migrate the system. It's pure simplicity.
(d) When I'm working from any location with reliable and fast internet access, it's Office 365 online every time.

As somebody else has said, there is no "best" solution - but for anyone who *must* use MS Office (as opposed to just playing with it), I would advise avoiding Wine, Crossover and Playonlinux like the plague.