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Self-hosting paradox: Windows for specifically MS word
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2026
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If the only thing you need is not even the whole Office suite but just a Word processor (and not even any particular version) and since you'll be remoting to it for the graphical access, you don't need to spin up a whole Windows VM for that. You can just spin up something with Wine and install the Word component from Office 2013 on that (I'd say Office 2013 at most; you might be able to get away with Office 2007 but I wouldn't recommend it).
Better yet, Libre Office. Fully compatible with MS formats plus ODF (which Microsoft now supports too btw)
To be fair, and this is coming to someone who is fully sold on LibreOffice and hosts Collabera, the two word processors can open each other's documents, but cannot produce identical outputs for the same files.
For 99.99% of things switching between the two is going to be just fine, but every once in awhile that 0.01% will really bite you, especially if it is something important such as equations which I have seen first hand don't properly migrate to LibreOffice.
I can understand the point that Word is needed for producing some borked, glitched, eldritch formatting that 99% of people expect as correct because Office is that much widespread and has trained people to be Wrong on the Internet; and in that case yeah I would still recommend running a(n older version of!) Office just so that you can process (and test) that you are producing what is expected in the exchange.
It's curious actually. While LO compatibility has improved, I don't think anything close to an umbrella "Imitate Word [$VERSION] Glitches" option has ever been added or even considered for LO? How about the other Word imitators? Can eg.: WPS or Calligra replicate Microslop idosyncracies? Because if so, running those would be better than running Office on a remote.