The Halloween Documents revealed how Microsoft planned to extinguish Linux, but the open-source community turned it into a weapon
Its leak gave the open-source community vital intel versus the big leagues.
Microsoft Office can now run on Linux without virtualization, thanks to a combination of Wine, GE-Proton, and the Bottles project. The Office Deployment Tool and Office itself are downloaded at install time by a script, and a Microsoft 365 license is required to sign in. The installation process downloads several gigabytes into a folder, and then runs the click-to-run installer inside a prefix.
The installer window may appear frozen for a long time. The Wine build from Valve/GloriousEggroll, called GE-Proton, is used instead of the stock Wine. A minimal version of the Microsoft Software Protection Platform (SPP) is included to handle licensing. The Office Licensing Service is used instead of the traditional product key system, allowing Office to authenticate through a signed-in Microsoft account.
Sign-in works with a personal Microsoft account, and Office fetches the account's entitlements. However, an actual license is not present, as the test account did not have a Microsoft 365 subscription that includes the desktop apps. The project team has verified that sign-in completes, Word shows the account's OneDrive documents, and Office fetches the account's entitlements.
Other WinRT gaps the ole32 shim fills for the licensing code, such as Windows.Globalization.Language statics and Windows.Data.Json.JsonObject statics. The project team has not verified the functionality of features like Microsoft account sign-in, OneNote, Teams, and any WinRT Windows.* APIs. The project is still in development and not a guarantee of full functionality.
Users can either buy or manage a Microsoft 365 subscription on the web and then sign in again in Word.
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