Web apps

OnlyOffice has fantastic support for Microsoft originated documents. I typically use the Flatpak version. The look and feel is very similar to the office suite so you should be “right at home”.

You don't (sorry)

The flowchart is as follows:

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.

libre office not being a smart arse either. it's the easiest way. i am making some assumptions however. i assume you are a full on Linux user at home and have to deal with MS Office documents of various types at work or some other reason. you can work on that document at work un MS Office. bring it home and work on it some more in libre office. and back again.

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

I have a Windows VM on my server. If I need MS Office or any Windows-only program I just use Remmina to RDP in and get stuff done.

Windows has pretty good touch support over RDP so I can even do this from my phone or tablet if I need a full desktop on the go (using a VPN).

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.

You could use libreoffice apps and then convert it to Microsoft formats to share with your coworkers.

Buy CrossOver for Linux. Positive side effect: you support Wine development.

Another person already answered about the office apps so I won't mention it. What I know is that the most recent version of GNOME has OneDrive support so Ubuntu 24.04 should have it. Copilot is impossible to get. Also if you use the Microsoft suite, you probably should be running Windows. There's not that much point in switching to Linux in this case

If you are brave and have time: Wine

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.

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

VirtualBox?

Virtualizing the whole windows OS right inside Linux I think it's the best option if you want to use the M$ ecosystem.

Copilot is available in Microsoft Edge, and you can bind a hotkey to open it.

There's Onedriver to connect onedrive on Linux. Though it's been a while since I last used it.

I mean. does o365 not work or you specifically want to run the exe's?

If you have to you can, sometimes. But you should use alternatives, if possible.

OnlyOffice has amazing compatibility with MS office formats and has an interface quite similar to the MS apps.

But if you want something a bit more feature rich, LibreOffice is the way to go.

I know it's not really what you asked for, but unless you want to run an ancient version of the office suite in Wine, it's the way to go. The MS office web apps on MS's website is also an option.