Can it run recent versions of Office though? That is what would make it useful for many people, but previous versions have never been able to (I have tried!). It's the Office click-to-run installer, which has been around since Office 2016 and the only installation method since 2019, which was the problem.
Wine 11 runs Windows apps in Linux and macOS better than ever
The latest version of the Wine Windows app runner arrives a year after version 10. Given its annual release cycle, its magic is starting to seem almost boring and routine, but it's far from it. The Wine project delivered Wine 11.0 Tuesday, very slightly less than one year after we covered the release of Wine 10. Wine lets you …
-
-
Thursday 15th January 2026 12:45 GMT Hubert Cumberdale
Came here to ask just that. Running Word smoothly in Wine is what would make using a Linux distro on my day-to-day desktop viable for me. (And don't tell me to run LibreOffice – I like it well enough, but even 99.97% compatibility wouldn't be enough for my use case – sadly it just has to be Word or my clients will have problems sooner rather than later [formatting, comments, tracked changes, etc.].)
-
Thursday 15th January 2026 14:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
You have the option to run Office through the web, (with monthly subscription and an active Internet connection so they can harvest your rich creamy data.)
For a local install, get LibreOffice. Private, free and can save in Office file formats.
If running actual Word / Excel is a must, then Win 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 ad nauseum is your life until your final logoff and you are stuck in the MS hamster wheel.
-
Thursday 15th January 2026 14:51 GMT 43300
The web versions of Office are shit compared to the installed ones, and the files need to be saved to Microsoft's cloudy storage.
It's really bizarre the way the Linux faithful seem to almost take offence that anyone might need to run MS Office, and downvote anyone pointing this out. Will they ever come to understand that not everyone lives in their bubble and business realities dictate what software some people need to run?
And Libre Office is not an adequate substitute if sharing complex documents / spreadsheets - there are too many circumstances where full compatibility cannot be guaranteed. The post to which the one above was responding even specifically pointed this out but was clearly ignored.
-
Thursday 15th January 2026 17:33 GMT brainwrong
What?
microsoft, and maybe your clients, are the problem here, not linux or its fanboys.
"The post to which the one above was responding even specifically pointed this out but was clearly ignored."
It wasn't ignored, the reply stated that you're stuck on the ms hamster wheel.
The free software people aren't going to all this trouble to create ms compatibility, then stopping 1 inch short of the end just to be cunts. That last 1 inch is clearly very difficult / impossible. Whose fault do you think that is?
How much have you paid for linux? I have my frustrations with linux, but I've paid nothing for any of it, so I just have to live with it as it is, and occasionally let off a bit of steam here.
-
Thursday 15th January 2026 18:37 GMT Ian Johnston
Re: What?
The free software people aren't going to all this trouble to create ms compatibility, then stopping 1 inch short of the end just to be <gratuitous sexist slur>
It is not simply a matter of compatibility. Equation editing is not compatible between MS Word and LibreOffice, for whatever reason, but is also far, far better in Word, not least because you can enter LaTeX. Of course LaTeX itself is better still.
-
Saturday 17th January 2026 06:54 GMT Eric 9001
Re: What?
><gratuitous sexist slur>
It's many things, but it's not sexist; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cunt?useskin=monobook#Other_usage
LibreOffice can support LaTeX; https://extensions.libreoffice.org/en/extensions/show/texmaths-1 and those will display fine in word.
It's slightly inconvenient, but big deal - if you want a proper document, you should be using LaTeX anyway.
As far as I am aware, math equations may not be compatible between different versions of office.
-
-
Friday 16th January 2026 07:48 GMT werdsmith
Re: What?
What do you suggest he do about the clients? Tell them to fuck off?
And it really doesn’t matter that 100% compatibility is difficult, the fact is he still has to support the clients.
I come up against the Word problem often. If you want that document comment/change thing to work with the clients, then you agree a version of Word and stick to it. Anything else falls flat on its face.
-
Friday 16th January 2026 11:40 GMT Hubert Cumberdale
Re: What?
Yeah, this is the point I guess. I'm not blaming anyone for non-100% compatibility (I really don't care who is at "fault", if anyone – LibreOffice is impressive, as is OSS in general, and I support and use it where I can). The need to use Word is just my reality. People often seem to downvote reality on here though, like it will somehow make it go away.
-
Saturday 17th January 2026 06:59 GMT Eric 9001
Re: What?
You do not need to use word - what has happened is that you have made the explicit choice to start using word and becoming more and more dependent on word and you are not working towards resolving such dependency.
It might take you a month, a year, or several years of work and then you'll no longer be a servant of microsoft, but you won't as you are a coward.
-
Saturday 17th January 2026 07:23 GMT Hubert Cumberdale
Re: What?
Wow. You really aren't a fan of reality. I'll say it one more time. It's not about me: I can't change what my clients require. Doesn't matter how much anyone screams into the void that "it doesn't have to be like this!". Neither you nor I can change the fact that to stop using Word, I would essentially have to change career entirely. Tell me that's my choice if you like, but the economy is currently not good and I have to eat.
-
Saturday 17th January 2026 12:09 GMT FIA
Re: What?
I think you've entirely highlighted the problem.
It's one of perception, people see it as right/wrong blame thing.
It's no-ones 'fault' that Word or Excel are hard to replicate. It's because they're 30+ year old pieces of software who's maker has no commercial incentive to make them interoperable.
Unless you can persuade someone with government level powers that interoperability has become so vital to business that MS must work to make them compatible it won't happen.
This nearly happened in the early 2000s.... nearly.
These days though, despite MS still having the desktop monopoly they had in the 90s the world has moved on and no one that can do anything cares.
-
-
-
-
Saturday 17th January 2026 10:31 GMT steelpillow
Re: What?
> What do you suggest he do about the clients? Tell them to fuck off?
No, join them on the hamster wheel.
Nothing wrong in that, they are ultimately paying for it and our beer money has to come from somewhere.
Equally, my personal box is a reasonably well-purged Devuan and I wouldn't have /that/ side of my day any other way (well, all right, I'm too lazy to purge PulseAudio, but I won't mention that).
-
-
-
Saturday 17th January 2026 12:23 GMT FIA
Re: What?
Talk about staying in your bubble.
You understand the bubble puts food on their table?
Can you explain how they leave that bubble? That might be more helpful.
So, here's the scenario... I run a business, what I do isn't important, just that it's not 'selling Linux'. (i.e. the choice of computing platform isn't relevant to the work I do). I however decide I want to move to Linux because MS is a data grabbing whore.
How do I go about that? I need to interact with the Word and Excel documents that my paying clients and I exchange between us.
How do I make it painless and acceptable for my clients to do this?
Lets say, for argument that my business has a broad spectrum of clients, which I can classify as 2 basic types. There's the small 1 person type outfits, who just buy a computer with an office subscription. How do I broach the re-training they'll require to switch to Libreoffice. (Assuming they're not computer professionals and they view their computer as a business tool)? What tangible benefits will the cost outlay offer them? (Again, they're not computer people so I'm unlikely to be able to use the FOSS argument).
What about the other larger clients, to whom I'm just one of many many business relationships. How do I broach the topic with them? Do I have ways to suggest they can just use Libreoffice with me or will I take the pain of taking their MS documents and making them work? (both ways? And if so, how do I actually do that?)
Who pays for this re-training? Do I offer discounts? How much? How do I ensure my clients don't get annoyed and look elsewhere?
-
-
Saturday 17th January 2026 06:19 GMT Eric 9001
Re: What?
Free software people actually haven't done any work supporting the execution of microsoft software, as that would go against the very goals of free software - although free software patches or programs that happen to support proprietary software done by others aren't rejected.
Btw, Linux is not free software (the only actual free version of Linux is GNU Linux-libre) and it seems many Linux developers are proprietary software developers that only develop proprietary software, or consider themselves "open source" developers, who primarily develop proprietary software, but occasionally do happen to develop and release free software.
Also, if you have paid for some hardware that requires a proprietary program that is part of Linux to work, you have in fact paid for the relevant proprietary part of Linux (but clearly that what a negative act from you and there's also no excuse for the software to be proprietary, as you have paid).
I suspect you are thinking of the GNU OS and free software written for GNU that happens to be usually available gratis.
LibreOffice is a perfectly viable direct free software replacement to m$ office in 99% of cases - in 1% of cases there is further work required to resolve proprietary sabotage - but that's not LibreOffice's fault is it?
You don't need to live with any free software program not functionally being to your liking - you can fix it yourself, or pay a programmer to fix it (yes, paying a programmer may be required to escape from m$ office, which will be a seemingly large sum, but over the medium term, you'll realize how much money and time you have saved as a result of your work not being actively sabotaged by office).
-
-
Friday 16th January 2026 10:34 GMT _wojtek
for compatibility maybe use ODF files (open format) instead of pseudo open MS formats)? MS office should handle them.
And I know that "the customer is always right" but if you have a chance maybe suggest alternatives?
And if your really habe to deal with MS Office files theres also OnlyOffice (open-source, Latvian) which supoosedly offers better compatibility with office files (and IMHO has somewhat better UI compared to LibreOffice)
-
Friday 16th January 2026 11:50 GMT Hubert Cumberdale
I get that people want this to work, but "better" compatibility is not 100% compatibility. And sometimes it's hard enough to stop my clients from sending me PDFs to "edit" – I'm not about to try to befuddle their (non-technical) minds further by asking for ODF. To use a weird metaphor, if I were a mechanic, I couldn't just tell people they'd brought me the wrong car and I only work on Hondas* – I'd go out of business pretty quickly. Sadly, people drive Teslas whether we like it or not.
Believe me, I'd dump MS if I could – I've already dumped Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop for Darktable and GIMP, respectively, and boy were those steep learning curves, but totally worth it.
*Yes, yes – I know that's kinda how main dealers work, but you see my point.
-
Saturday 17th January 2026 07:03 GMT Eric 9001
microsoft office intentionally sabotages ODF support, so LibreOffice's MOX implementation has better results.
Yes, if you can get the customer to use decent software with decent compatibility instead, you can avoid the consequences of word.
OnlyOffice is SaaSS and as far as I can tell, the slightly better "compatibility" is because they run proprietary microsoft software on their server to convert the formats - I would use LibreOffice instead.
-
-
-
Saturday 17th January 2026 09:49 GMT Snar
What's wrong with running Orifice under OSX? Works perfectly here.
With a mix of Linux Mint with Oracle Virtualbox for some non-Linux comms software and OSX I've pretty much weaned myself away from any reliance on Windows.
My Linux box can dual boot into Win11 but typically only gets used when I feel like tormenting myself for an hour plus updating and then fixing the update.
-
-
-
-
Friday 16th January 2026 12:07 GMT DJV
True!
Back in the 1990s, when I was at university, we had a mix of (never quite enough) Windows PCs and Macs. When you needed to do some word processing, you had to grab the first available computer. Both of them were running Word that had 'exactly' the same version number. However, moving a document between the Windows version and the Mac version more often than not would screw up the formatting in subtle but very annoying ways.
-
-
-
-
Thursday 15th January 2026 13:56 GMT CountCadaver
Using excel as a database seems even more of a weird way to have done something when MS Office business editions (even the small business one) came with Access, which despite being....well.....sub optimal was still an actual database and not a spreadsheet being misused.
I'm reminded of this (obligatory) XKCD webcomic
https://xkcd.com/763/
-
-
Thursday 15th January 2026 14:29 GMT NoneSuch
Gaming is the Key
If WINE can run games seamlessly, then most other Windows applications will work as well, because gaming represents the most complex and demanding side of Windows computing. PC gaming is uniquely challenging on Linux since the ecosystem was built around Windows from the ground up: DirectX is Windows-only and must be translated through compatibility layers, many multiplayer titles rely on Windows-first anti-cheat systems that block or ignore Linux entirely, and GPU drivers—especially for new hardware and features—are typically optimized for Windows first, with Linux support arriving later or with compromises.
Nail gaming on Linux and the rest falls into line (barring active measures to block you from the OS vendors, of course.)
-
Thursday 15th January 2026 16:23 GMT Sudosu
Re: Gaming is the Key
I swapped over maybe six months ago to Bazzite.
I haven't run into any Steam games that have outright failed yet...but to be fair I have not gone through my whole library to test each. Some are pretty intensive and work just like they did on Windows 10 (or better as I used to have to shut of real time scanning from Defender to prevent stuttering)
I run Heroic for my Epic games library and all of those work so far but once again I have not ground through the library to check them all.
I run the EA App through Bottles and it works fine for the old games I actually own on there including an old BF game.
Blizzard is supposed to work in Bottles but I have not had luck with that, so I installed their app under Steam and it works great for all my games.
If your game runs Vulkan I find it will run way better than DX11 or 12.
Kernel level anti-cheat has no place on any computer I own, though others don't care so that is definitely a nope for functionality on Linux.
Office productivity etc. is still a gap for sure.
I don't run MS Office anymore and have lived with the online versions for my customers which is navigable but not as full featured as local clients like you mentioned. I would hazard they should work under Bottles or one of the other translators?
DaVinci Resolve is one I hear mentioned a lot, they had a Linux version but there are issues with the licensed formats, encoders etc. and the Windows version will not emulate yet.
Adobe has a quite a few products are also problematic (at least from what I hear)
The only current workarounds for those is a VM or moving to a similarish Linux based app. which means re-learning from scratch something you have been doing your whole career in some cases.
Anyway, for me its fine but there are definitely a lot of gaps from just walking away from your Windows install.
In my experience: Windows chews RAM, Linux chews CPU.
I honestly thought I would miss Windows a lot more since I have been using it for a very very long time.
In fact I still have my Windows 10 partition "just in case", but I have resisted so far and will for a while since I don't want to spend half my day patching it haha.
TLDR - Works for a lot of games barring ones with kernel anti-cheat. Works ok for basic office productivity, with MS Office online being a work around. Works not so well for big vendor creative applications. Its not as bad as I thought it would be.
-
Friday 16th January 2026 01:19 GMT The Central Scrutinizer
Re: Gaming is the Key
"DaVinci Resolve is one I hear mentioned a lot, they had a Linux version but there are issues with the licensed formats, encoders etc. and the Windows version will not emulate yet."
They still have the Linux version.
I'm running the free version of Resolve on Linux Mint and it works very well indeed. Compared to the paid for version, it is missing quite a few effects, most of which are just fluffy stuff like fancy wipes and the like. It has all the tools you actually need, including all the editing tools and the amazing colour grading stuff (might be missing a certain advanced function in there, can't remember). It also has Fusion for compositing and motion graphics, which is a beast of a module.
You have less output options than the paid version, but for me it's not a problem.
Not sure what you mean regarding those issues. I haven't encountered any.
-
Friday 16th January 2026 12:59 GMT Boothy
Re: Gaming is the Key
Similar, been on Mint for just over 2 years now, dual boot into Win10, but I haven't booted up Windows now for months, and the last time was just to run updates.
I game, browse, watch or listen to media, do a bit of Python (learning just for the fun of it), and a little bit of CAD for 3d printing, so don't need anything professional, plus BambuLabs support Linux natively (one of the reasons I picked one of their printers).
The only competitive multiplayer game I play is War Thunder, and that's native Linux, so for myself, the kernel level anti-cheat stuff isn't an issue (and I wouldn't wan't those games on Windows ether, keep your mitts of my kernel!).
Currently thinking of wiping the Win 10 drive and dropping CachyOS on to it (I have 3 x M.2 NVME drives, one for Windows, one with Mint, and then the 3rd is an ext4 mounted under Mint for game installs, with the OS drives having their respective boot loaders only on their own drive, so Windows doesn't mess with Mint etc on updates). I also disabled the CPU based TPM and secure boot, in order to stop Win 11 for being installed on the sly, like MS did with my Win 7 to Win 10 install years back!
Even drivers haven't been an issue for new hardware, I got an AMD 9070XT at launch, and the updated firmware and drivers had already been released before the hardware was released (although as I'm on Mint, I did have to manually do a few changes there, but that wouldn't be an issue on something like CachyOS or Bazzite.
-
-
-
Friday 16th January 2026 09:31 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Gaming is the Key
Unfortunately I've run into quite a few. Maybe it's possible to fix but I don't often have time to do this.
I can't get No Man's Sky to run, or Zwift for bike training and a few others I can't recall (Death Standing runs but at about 5fps). There are Linux guides for them and NMS reputedly should run fine but nope.
Might well be a NVidia issue, a recurring problem for me on Linux.
Still, I enjoy using Mint much more than 11 mainly as I know it's not trying to feast on my blood at every opportunity.
-
-
Saturday 17th January 2026 04:30 GMT dansbar
Re: Gaming is the Key
Gaming on Linux has been ‘nailed’ for a couple of years now. Steam have been massively contributing to Wine in the form of Proton and have reached the point where even games with ridiculously invasive anti-cheat will work flawlessly.
I’m Kubuntu 25.10 on a machine with an RTX5070 with no driver issues and not a single Steam game that I’ve tried running often better than it does under W11 (I attribute this mostly to W11 bloat and whatever awfulness Defender tries to do). Currently playing through Starwars Outlaws with considerably better framerate than I can achieve on Windows 11 with the same hardware.
The M365 Desktop apps are the last challenge that I can see for Wine and I suspect that the only reason it hasn’t been conquered is because Microsoft are actively preventing it from working.
-
-
Friday 16th January 2026 09:18 GMT Liam Proven
Since this subthread continues to grow...
> Can it run recent versions of Office though?
OK, question.
1. Define "recent". Seriously: can the assembled agree on a coherent line in the sand?
2. In 2016-2017 I designed, wrote and illustrated a 330 page technical service manual for a 3D printer aimed at educational markets (i.e. very tough, armoured, highly serviceable). I did it entirely in Word in outline mode. The early layout and drafting was in Word 97, but that became a limit, for hardware reasons: I got a portrait screen and Word 97 couldn't handle the resolution.
So, I upgraded to Word 2003. That worked fine and it was completed in that, and so was the 2nd edition.
This was running under WINE on Ubuntu most of the job. When the pics were added, the file grew to about a gigabyte, and my Core 2 Duo Thinkpad X200 struggled, so I bought a Core i5 X220 and it was finished in that.
I booted Win10 for file uploading and checking.
So, yes, it is good enough for production work, but I detest the ribbon so I won't use later versions. I _very_ rarely need it so why tolerate the horrid UI?
That was a decade ago (although both laptops still work very well) but it was entirely doable.
Yes this works. Yes you can do it.
If you want OS extensions like Sharepoint, Onedrive etc., then no -- if Linux can't do that on its own, then you will have problems.
The standalone monolithic apps, if carefully installed, doing a custom install and turning off all the addons that don't work. I've been doing that since Office 97 when I turned off the Office Assistant (the dreaded 'Clippy') and Word in Exchange and other toxic-waste features. Clients were sometimes surprised, but they came to like and appreciate my slightly cleaner setup.
Of course, asking many folks to do a custom install counts as deep wizardry these days. For anyone in that level of deep ineptitude, then no, Wine is too hard, Linux is too hard, computers are too hard.
For them...
Go buy an iPad.
-
Friday 16th January 2026 11:39 GMT Wade Burchette
Microsoft Office in Wine
I would try the Office offline installer. That might work in Wine. It is worth trying.
-
Friday 16th January 2026 14:23 GMT Nyle
Crossover Linux gives Office 2016 and 365 a 3 of 4 start ranking based on the version of Crossover Linux run. So yes, it'll run it but likely some features like scanning or other ODBE integrations won't work. I would imagine that just editing documents is likely functional. Give it a try, free 14 day trial.
Or check out Wine 11 directly. I'm certain there are instructions online to stand it up. You can either run a live Linux instance from USB or run one in a VM to test it out.
https://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/crossover/microsoft-word-365
-
-
Thursday 15th January 2026 13:26 GMT Long John Silver
Microsoft's response?
I imagine Microsoft has kept a wary eye on Wine since Wine's inception.
Presumably, try as they might, Microsoft's lawyers cannot devise credible arguments that Wine infringes Microsoft 'rights' under copyright, patent, or trademark law; that despite the USA being the global hub for rentier economics. Even if they could sustain an argument in court, the enforcement of a restrictive ruling globally would be nigh on impossible. However, at present, Wine offers a negligible threat to Microsoft's hegemony in the business and educational markets.
Recent versions of Wine have become more simple to deploy, and they produce timely and trustworthy output. Seamlessly, they enable the use of many gargantuan (bloated?) software suites. Given the number of trustworthy suppliers of unfettered software, buccaneers have plenty to fill gaps in Linux provision. Also, even should a Windows program be stuffed with 'nasties', prudent Linux users easily circumvent them.
As for 'Microsoft Store', who needs it when unofficial sources for such components as are deemed worth having abound?
-
Thursday 15th January 2026 13:57 GMT Steve Davies 3
Re: Microsoft's response?
If MS really, really wanted it could engineer apps like Office to fail miserably when they detect wine running.
but so far, they don't and long may that remain. They (MS) seem to be hell bent on adding AI to everything even if it does not need it.
The more 'Donald Trump Fingers' that can be given to MS the better in my mind.
-
Thursday 15th January 2026 22:00 GMT katrinab
Re: Microsoft's response?
Last time I looked, it couldn't run anything later than Office 2003. It seems to have improved slightly since then, but nevertheless, you will be better off running LibreOffice than any of the versions of MS Office that Wine can cope with, even if LibreOffice can't replace the latest versions of MS Office.
-
Thursday 15th January 2026 14:59 GMT Bill Gray
Re: Microsoft's response?
I would assume that Microsoft's response is that "Office™ isn't done until Wine doesn't run (it)".
In some of my code, I've checked to see if if it was running under Wine so that it could behave differently. Usually, as in the linked example, it's because there's some bits or bobs of the Win32 API that don't work identically in Wine and "real" Windows. I'm sure that if the threat from Wine was sufficiently serious, Microsoft could fairly trivially modify their applications to break when not run on Genuine Windows®.
(I am a serious fanboy for Wine. It's saved me the effort of porting several programs to Linux or OS/X or *BSD. At most, I had to tweak them -- as above -- to duck around some limitation in Wine. And note that the above example references Wines 1.7.18 and 7.0.1; I would be surprised if many of those limitations still existed in Wine 11.)
-
Thursday 15th January 2026 16:19 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Microsoft's response?
> Presumably, try as they might, Microsoft's lawyers cannot devise credible arguments that Wine infringes Microsoft 'rights' under copyright, patent, or trademark law; that despite the USA being the global hub for rentier economics
No, but they could probably try to argue that Wine allows for running programs that enable people to look at pictures of "women and children naked".
Might be enough!
-
Thursday 15th January 2026 17:02 GMT Liam Proven
Re: Microsoft's response?
> Presumably, try as they might, Microsoft's lawyers cannot devise credible arguments that Wine infringes Microsoft 'rights' under copyright, patent, or trademark law;
Agreed.
But then if you look at the history, WINE is a 32-bit FOSS recreation of SUN WABI:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi_(software)
https://web.archive.org/web/19990824175632/http://sun.com/solaris/wabi/%3B$sessionid$510WNTIAAV2X3AMUVFZE45UBSSUXEUDO
Caldera gave me an eval copy of WABI for Linux and it ran Office 4.3 on Caldera OpenLinux very well.
https://everythinglinux.org/wabi/index.html
Screenshots etc:
https://virtuallyfun.com/2020/11/11/fun-with-caldera-wabi/
Sun proposed formally standardising and publishing the Win16 API:
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/234999.235003
It nearly happened.
Since MS-DOS was written as an independent implementation of the published DR CP/M API, it is a scary precedent for MS...
-
-
Thursday 15th January 2026 14:43 GMT Steve Foster
Hardware Support?
The primary requirement for Windows that I have to deal with is niche USB hardware. The manufacturer provides suitable USB device drivers, and their interface software uses the AccessDB file format (this makes it fairly simple to talk to from other software).
Does WINE support driving USB devices?
Does it support the AccessDB underpinnings (OLEDB/ODBC)?
-
Friday 16th January 2026 11:08 GMT Liam Proven
Re: Hardware Support?
> Does WINE support driving USB devices?
Directly? No. But there are facilities to point a particular device to a Windows binary.
As a general rule, if you need direct hardware access, this is not the way to do it.
> Does it support the AccessDB underpinnings (OLEDB/ODBC)?
It has ODBC support and can connect to Windows sources and to ones on the host via `unixODBC`. I have not tried this myself. Happily I do not need to fix such things any more, and that has made my life more pleasant.
-
-
Saturday 17th January 2026 08:32 GMT Eric 9001
Re: Hardware Support?
It can't, as generally usb drivers need to interface with the NT kernel, which WINE Is Not an Emulator doesn't emulate.
It'll probably be easier to just write a free software driver for the USB device and then use it with free software, than to get windows usb drivers working.
-
-
-
-
Thursday 15th January 2026 17:06 GMT Liam Proven
Re: Wine 11.0 Tuesday
> Wine 11.0 Tuesday
> WTF is that?
You excerpted a sentence fragment. In full it says:
«
The Wine project delivered Wine 11.0 Tuesday
»
That means "the WINE Project delivered version 11.0 on Tuesday."
What I originally wrote was:
«
The Wine project delivered Wine 11.0 yesterday (as we write)
»
... but it didn't run until Thursday. So, it got edited, and ended up a little less clear.
-
Thursday 15th January 2026 18:34 GMT Dan 55
Re: Wine 11.0 Tuesday
Why does this esteemed organ waste time and money editing perfectly good text into nonsense? Even if it must be changed to the day (not that it would make any difference within a few days), American English allows for "on" for clarity before days and dates.
-
-
Thursday 15th January 2026 16:37 GMT Boufin
If you really need MS Office, you should probably pay for a license and a licensed copy of Windows. If you prefer Linux then you can probably run your legit Windows on a VM.
Do MS Office fan boys see any compatibility issues between Mac and Windows versions? I seem to recall some compatibility niggles when I had no choice but to use MS Office.
For my use cases, the Office web versions, Google Docs and Libra office serve me well.
WINE is great for Adobe Digital Editions and a few other niche apps that are useful to me
-
Thursday 15th January 2026 17:23 GMT Liam Proven
> If you really need MS Office, you should probably pay for a license and a licensed copy of Windows.
Why?
The superficial unconsidered answer is "apps run better on the real OS and so it's better to run it if you can" but that falls down on deeper inspection.
There's no _legal_ requirement -- run them on whatever you can -- and if WINE works well enough, it offers 3 main categories of advantages:
[1] It integrates better: apps can see the Linux filesystem, Linux apps can access Windows files (e.g. you can open email attachments or downloads, and directly attach and send files from Windows apps); cut and paste works in both directions.
[2] There is no need for VMs, isolation, setting up comms and integration between emulated virtual environment and host; apps run at full native resolution on the native display, etc.
[3] There is no separate Windows OS in need of licensing, updates, virus protection, and other continued maintenance.
Triple win.
I use both methods, but if a given app works under WINE, that's the preferable method. It starts quicker, runs quicker, it uses _much_ less RAM and disk, and it integrates better.
-
Thursday 15th January 2026 18:20 GMT Stu J
I've recently been forced to use Word and Excel on a Mac (the web versions wouldn't cut it) and they're still dodgy - there's definitely minor compatibility niggles. Almost certainly deliberate by MS. They're scum, their nefarious tactics over the last 30 years make what VW did with the diesel-defeat scandal look like child's play.
-
Thursday 15th January 2026 17:28 GMT mark l 2
I know that a lot of companies still see Linux as too small a market on the desktop to warrant a native Linux port of their apps. But it would be nice if they could at least test and tweak their Windows builds to work under WINE and well as Windows. As although im no dev im sure it wouldn't be a massive amount of work to do, especially if your an large corporation with a large dev team.
Microsoft on the other hand wants to keep their cash cow of office running primarily on Windows. As if 365 ran flawlessly under WINE then the Office compatibility tie in that keeps a lot of businesses running Windows maybe broken. As businesses could save on the cost of a Windows license by just installing Linux with WINE and then use Office without having to pay for a Windows license, which is going to directly hit Microsoft profits.
-
Saturday 17th January 2026 08:41 GMT Eric 9001
Microsoft wouldn't really care if it became convenient to run office in WINE (despite their best efforts to sabotage execution in WINE), as the cash cow is the office "licenses" and other things, as those are a huge sum that renew yearly, while windows "licenses" are slightly less and there is generally only one payment per computer ("people" paying 3 times instead of 4 times for something that costs $0 to provide a copy of, is not that much of a profit difference).
-
-
Thursday 15th January 2026 17:42 GMT Luiz Abdala
Windows taking L pills with Wine.
The Linux boys are improving day by day, while the Windows boys are failling left and right.
Gaming has SteamOS, Wine looks very capable, and I am running out of reasons to even consider a Windows 11 setup. If I have to abandon my Windows 10, I am so jumping into the Wine tanker. As long as gaming works (GTA and the sort are known for being ill-tempered with kernel anti-cheat tools) I will gladly abandon the nonsense Windows has become.
-
Thursday 15th January 2026 22:30 GMT alkasetzer
FreeBSD
Wine 11 is actually available on FreeBSD. It's just that the package (port) is called wine-devel.
FreeBSD has several such packages, like drm-latest-kmod (drm 6.9 instead of 6.6), mesa-devel (mesa 26 instead of 24.3 or some such), wine-geko-devel and some others.
This way, an user can have stable or a relatively more up to date OS.
-
Thursday 15th January 2026 23:45 GMT Michael Hoffmann
If only Wine 11 would finally make that jump to support Office, regardless of what MS try to obstruct it with (the local installable one, even if it's 2016 or 2019 - what have they actually added in useful features since?) I could at least get my wife on to a Linux distro of here look&feel choice (I suspect something like Kubuntu which goes some ways to make itself look Windows-y).
She needs a browser, Outlook, OneNote, Word, Excel and Project. Oh, and iTunes... that's it. No, I am *not* going to proselytise for (inferior or just different enough that her aging brain can't switch) native Linux alternatives.
Heck, I could have her on Linux full time before me: I had already made the switch when I hit a wall with my Flightsim gear, a fairly serious setup that resulted in a number of components simply not working, alas. I had to switch back - in this market a dedicated flightsim box is not in the budget. I'm looking at comfortable retirement, not techbro obscene riches.
-
Friday 16th January 2026 08:50 GMT Boufin
If your wife needs all those proprietary Microsoft applications then she should probably run on Windows. It's what Microsoft would want. They want to own the whole stack so they can keep an eye on you and help you with all their monitoring.
The whole Libra compatibility issue makes me laugh - it's clear that Microsoft can't hit 100% between the Windows suite, Microsoft 365 on web (and mobile), and the Apple suite. It just shows what a tangled mess of code and interfaces it has become.
-
Friday 16th January 2026 22:29 GMT Michael Hoffmann
That would normally be the easiest route, but one day Windows 10 will die and I will NOT have 11 or anything after around, barring some miraculous change in Microsoft, which is as likely as me winning the lotto. Liam's suggestion of just going Mac is probably the most sensible, if I can convince her.
-
-
-
-
Monday 19th January 2026 16:15 GMT Anonymous Coward
Going Mac was my solution >10 years ago - both my and my wife's laptops are not MacBooks. Any OS-based issues are extremely rare. One family MS365 licence covers both and gives full interoperability with anyone we need to exchange files with (mainly volunteer/charity work as we're both retired from paid employment). The MS subscription dents our household budget less than tweaks to interest, tax or utility rates - it's a lot less than our annual broadband or mobile contracts - less than any TV subscription too (and we make less use of that than Office).
I have this strange notion that people (and businesses) should be paid for their work, so my two Linux VMs (and their native apps) are the only "free" software I have - but then I'm probably weird in not trying to grab what I can for free - after all, before retiring, I expected to get paid for what I provided to others.
My MacBook runs VMs for Windows11, Ubuntu and Fedora via Parallels so, if there's anything the native Mac can't do, I have those to call upon.
Insofar as the Apple "walled-garden" I look upon that as a feature rather than a problem - Apple kit is expensive but, in the main, Apple don't then try to use my data for their profit - and their checks on what is allowed to be installed are far better than any I could do.
If I was an IT "professional" making my living from being able to make computers do more than they can currently do (and I mean that mainly in a user enhancement mode, rather than leaps in technology) I would probably want to use Linux as my main platform, and would want to delve into it for customisation. As a user, however, I prefer something that doesn't need me to delve.
One example of how I see macOS as a better OS than Windows (and Linux, for that matter) is that I've never had any issues with drivers. For example, I do video editing with DV Resolve (on my MacBook Pro) and it works as installed and has not (in the past 4 years) failed on me. Looking at Blackmagic's Resolve forum, there are regular issues discussed where updating (or not updating) video drivers is necessary. Granted, my MBP may not be a powerful as some of the major Windows-based workstations but it gets on doing what I need it to do - it wasn't't the cheapest laptop on the market but I reckon my time is more valuable than the extra cash it cost.
Horses for courses and YMMV - life would get boring if we were all the same!
-
-
-
Friday 16th January 2026 12:13 GMT Mage
MS Project really?
So how big team of people does she manage?
No-one needs Outlook for email, that's only needed for corporate meetings scheduling and Exchange.
No-one needs One note.
Hardly anyone needs Word, unless they are sharing for edit the same doc with co-workers.
There are a few niche things Excel does that LO Calc doesn't have. Charts/graph creation & CSV import is better on LO Calc
All earlier versions of MS stuff with no AI are better, and even on Office 2002 and later the Office Assistant was an option install for Custom.
-
-
Thursday 15th January 2026 23:53 GMT tiggity
Never mind office...
The question many devs have is - does it run Visual Studio (proper VS, not the lightweight VS code app)
The only reason many devs have a windows box (or a Windows VM) is to run Visual Studio as, for writing (and, more crucially debugging ) windows applications, it is the best dev tool by a long, long way
-
Friday 16th January 2026 05:34 GMT Michael Hoffmann
Re: Never mind office...
If your job is to build and debug Windows apps, would you really do that on a Linux box though? (not counting a full bore Windows VM on top of Linux)
Cross dev is a thing, of course, but if you need the full VS rather than, say, Jetbrains Rider, you probably need every single idiosyncratic bit of Microsoftness.
-
Friday 16th January 2026 05:08 GMT Anonymous Coward
The elephant in the room is being ignored. In the past, Microsoft has given unsatisfactory responses as to why they actively and technically impede interoperability.
In the late '80s, my mate Wayne and I spent four times the cost of a bag of weed to buy the SDK for the Microsoft Mouse. We found that it documented only some of the Mouse API; swathes were missing, which made developing software slow, tortuous and unsatisfactory.
As was common with their SDKs at the time, you only received access to parts of the API, and many optimisations were not available. This was intended to give an edge to Microsoft software that could call those endpoints.
The lack of interoperability is for financial, rather than technical or security reasons. I blame Microsoft and their unquestioning corporate purchasers. Those working on the Wine project could be free to develop something new, rather than creating workarounds for corporate greed and institutional inertia.
-
Saturday 17th January 2026 08:08 GMT david 12
As was common with their SDKs at the time, you only received access to parts of the API, and many optimisations were not available. This was intended to give an edge to Microsoft software that could call those endpoints.
When MS was compelled to release the "private API", as they were by court order, it became obvious that the private API was not optimizations, and only gave MS an edge on pre-release access, not any other kind of edge. Their software was stuck with the pre-release API, because it was already in production, even after the better API became available.
As demonstrated by the MS Mouse drivers, which were slow, feature-poor, and incredibly memory-hungry.
-
-
Friday 16th January 2026 09:55 GMT Tubz
How good is WINE handling Edge running legacy IE code, as a lot of business still have old apps creaking away running in compatibility mode? If that's as near compatible as running under Windows, then that's a major blocker gone for Linux take up in business. Then of course software distribution, as I believe Microsoft don't do Linux clients for Intune/MECM/SCCM but the Window client should work, if Office works?
-
Friday 16th January 2026 12:02 GMT Mage
MS Store?
I don't care about the MS store, only running older Windows programs where there is no Linux alternative. Many of these don't work on ANY 64 bit Windows and many will never have updates, in some cases because the author is dead.
I always installed a 32 bit Wine first as I have no 64 bit Windows programs except what came with Windows 10. I have VMs for XP, Win7 & Win10, but Virtual box dropped Direct 3D on XP and the VM overhead is high compared to WINE. My 11" Linux "laptop" hasn't enough RAM for VMs and seems unwilling to run even an XP VM (which can run in much less RAM than Win7 & later). No Guest Utils for Win98.
So WINE is handy for a handful of old programs. I did get an Office 2003 & 2007 cheap to try on WINE, but for my needs even the last OO that ran on Wiin98 is better and current LO Office is fine. The VM XP is used occasionally, and Win7 VM only for iTunes (not since iPhone 6 given away) and an LED badge.
-
Friday 16th January 2026 17:22 GMT BenMyers
Too bad
It is too bad there is not a WINE that runs under Windows! WINE makes it easy to run all manner of Windows and DOS programs, easier than Windows itself, given that Microsoft has castrated the ability to run 16-bit programs following Windows XP. Despite Microsoft-Think, there are plenty of good solid financial reasons to run old 16-bit Windows and DOS programs. I have dealt directly with some of them.
-
Saturday 17th January 2026 00:42 GMT Dave Wall
How about WhatsApp
I hate using the phone - most of the time I have a set of headphones on and thus WhatsApp under Mint would mean a final goodbye to Windows 10 or 11. There are NO other pieces of software that allow actual calls - Whatsie & WhatsDesk just allow messaging which is somewhat pointless for me.
-
Saturday 17th January 2026 09:21 GMT thod
we need a wine app store
Example : emclient is a very capable email client and calendar that is more polished than thunderbird and lighter than outlook.
They don’t offer a linux version and probably won’t as porting it would be a financial risk and probably not worth it.
It does work quite well on wine but they won’t advertise it because of lack of official support and possible random bugs.
But if there were a third party reseller wine/steam store (with a additional fee or subscription) that propose more support, help with common wine issues, test the updates and so on, they might start advertise it alongside win and mac versions.
That would bring more and more apps on the official list. Like Steam but for conventional applications. Crossover if you read this…
-
Sunday 18th January 2026 11:59 GMT druck
Roblox?
Asking for my 12 year old; does Roblox work?
He's very annoyed that when Windows 10 went out of support on his old laptop I wiped it and put Linux on. The only thing that stopped a major riot was the wife getting a free Chromebook with her new phone which runs Roblox. He's softened up a bit on Linux after using it for the Pi Hut Maker Advent Calendar, but needs a bit more persuasion to see the light.
-
Monday 19th January 2026 09:00 GMT a.b
Re: Roblox?
Sadly no. Roblox's anti-cheat system is intentionally blocking compatibility with Linux, your kid will need a windows machine for that.
My 11 year old has been using Kubuntu for school and home for the last two years - mostly Minecraft, OBS Studio, Shotcut video editing, some other games via Steam and the Lutris front-end for Wine.
But for Roblox he's using my old windows laptop from late 2015 with Windows 10.
-
Biting the hand that feeds IT
