Macs (used to?) have a program (I think it might have been in the VMware suite) that let you run a windows VM behind the scenes, and display the applications as if they were applications in MacOS.

Are there applications for Linux that let you do something similar?

[–] TagMeInSkipIGotThis 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Parallels did that - possibly VMWare as well im not sure.

[–] Dave 1 points 1 year ago

Ah maybe it was Parallels. I didn't use them myself, just knew of others that did.

[–] Axisential 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, absolutely - wine itself has a layer to allow that. Have used it before and it works well (albeit with a bit of tweaking).

[–] Dave 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have searched around a little in the past and haven't managed to find a way to run MS Office on Linux (In particular, Excel. I don't care what anyone says, Calc is just not the same). I'd think if you can do a Windows VM set up like this, then you'd be able to do Excel. Can you point me to something that might help?

[–] d3Xt3r 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You can! Just use WinApps, it provides seamless windows + file type association, so it works similar to Parallels on Mac - you just double click an .xlsx in Linux, it fires up an Excel window on your Linux desktop.

Another option that works similarly, is Cassowary, but it hasn't been updated since Dec last year.

In either case, I'd highly recommend using a minimal, debloated version of Windows, such as Tiny10, so that it launches faster and doesn't consume much resources.

[–] Dave 2 points 1 year ago

Amazing, thanks! I'll give this a go when I get a chance 😀