Trick to run Microsoft Suite on Linux

… and run many more android applications on Linux Desktop.

4 min readFeb 19, 2020

The MS Suite / Office365 is only available for Windows and macOS. And it is not free too. You have to buy the subscription too before you can use it.

But on Linux, the problem is different. The suite is just not available. Many people use LibreOffice and various other applications serving the same. But the real experience is very painful and limited.

The formatting, ribbons available and compatibility with MS Suit — the challenges are really endless.

You could use Wine or Play On Linux to install the MS Office Suite. But you know it is a hack which is not an effective solution, and with many functionalities broken, ultimately makes you frustrated.

You can also use the cloud service to use online Word, Powerpoint etc. using your browser and manage an escape too. But it requires you to be online to use it.

Feeling the pain?

So what is the catch?

The catch is that APK (Android version) of MS Office is free to use. And if you can use a container that could run the android apk on Linux, it would be your best hack.

Why Container?

Because you can avoid the pain of running windows based virtual machine (maybe you have to start from scratch), or worse a raw android virtual machine on your Linux host.

Android is Linux at the core. It is Linux. You can run many Linux commands on the android shell (using ADB commands).

So, the solution is to run the apk in a container which leverages the same execution environment. So no need of installing any hypervisor such as VirtualBox or VMWare Play Station. And no need to create a virtual machine.

The container named AnBox is available on Linux for free. AnBox stands for ‘Android in a Box’ or in a container.

There’s no hardware virtualization either, and Anbox can work on a laptop or desktop or any Linux powered device (exaggerated too much. Can’t use on Raspberry Pi, e.g.). The supported flavours are, namely, Arch Linux, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Linux Mint, Manjaro, Kali, openSUSE, Solus, and of course Ubuntu.

The steps would be -

Install AnBox and related Kernel modules.
Install Google Play Store in the AnBox container.
Using ADB (or Sideloader apps), install the Android packages (APKs)

I will be exploring the AnBox on Ubuntu flavour of Linux.

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Install AnBox

Open the terminal on your Ubuntu Linux desktop and execute the following commands-

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:morphis/anbox-support
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y anbox-modules-dkms
sudo modprobe ashmem_linux
sudo modprobe binder_linux
sudo apt install -y android-tools-adb android-tools-fastboot

Above commands are adapted from the official page here. Verify that the kernel modules are created, by running this command-

ls -l /dev/{ashmem,binder}

We need snap application to install the AnBox container. Check if it is already installed by running this command-

snap --version

If an error is thrown, install snap on your Linux. With Ubuntu 18 it is installed by default.

Now, using snap, install AnBox-

sudo snap install --devmode --beta anbox

Install ADB on your Ubuntu Linux too-

sudo apt-get install android-tools-adb

Install Google Play Store

On you Ubuntu, install the utilities first-

sudo apt install wget lzip unzip squashfs-tools curl

Now, download the installer script-

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/geeks-r-us/anbox-playstore-installer/master/install-playstore.shchmod +x install-playstore.sh./install-playstore.sh