Ubuntu 12.04 64bit – Office 2010 with Wine

It works!!! It took me several hours to make it, but I do not regret time spent, I was so sick of running VirtualBox for MS Office.

You need

Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit - which is quite common for desktops.

MS Office 2010 32-bit, 64bit wont work, it has some issues with msxml.

Step1: Install recent wine

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wine1.5

More info on this page http://www.winehq.org/download/ubuntu

Step2: Install Office 32-bit

By default on 64bit host system wine emulates Windows 64bit , so before installing MS Office new wine root needs to be created, issue this command from CLI:

WINEPREFIX=~/.wine32 WINEARCH=win32 wine setup.exe

Step3: Unity taskbar icon

To make icon looks like native application instead of glass of wine do the following:

1. This is where you will find your icons or place your custom icons in here:

$ cd ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/256x256/apps/
$ ls
1DF1_PicasaPhotoViewer.0.png
.
.
.
29F5_WINWORD.0.png
850A_EXCEL.0.png
AA79_POWERPNT.0.png

2. Go to the following directory:

$ cd ~/.local/share/applications/wine/Programs/Microsoft\ Office
$ ls
Microsoft Excel 2010.desktop\
Microsoft Office 2010 Tools\
Microsoft PowerPoint 2010.desktop\
Microsoft Word 2010.desktop\

3. Edit .desktop files:

$ sudo nano Microsoft\ Word\ 2010.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Microsoft Word 2010
.
.
.
Icon=29F5_WINWORD.0.png (or name of icon as in above folder)
StartupWMClass=WINWORD.EXE

4. You are done!

Links

http://askubuntu.com/questions/39394/change-icon-of-wine-application-in-unity-launcher

http://www.liberiangeek.net/2012/06/how-to-install-microsoft-office-suite-2010-in-ubuntu-12-04-using-wine-1-5/