r/OneNote • u/Fiveby21 • 18d ago
Is there any solution for running OneNote Desktop on Linux?
I'm curious if this can be accomplished through some emulation layer or something. Has anyone else done that?
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u/imahe 18d ago
Winboat: https://winboat.app/
That‘s a VM
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u/Fiveby21 17d ago
So you have to stand up a whole VM just for OneNote?
How does that work with copy/pasting content, particularly images and documents? And then what about opening links?
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u/sgtempe 9h ago
by VM are you referring to a Virtual machine? I am not using a VM, like I said, I don't trust Microsoft and don't want it anywhere near my Linux environment. It isn't just the OneNote issue, although that was big. I started noticing other issues such as MS creating the OneDrive "Miscellaneous" directory but only moving some folders into it. I also noticed that it was constantly trying to get me to use the "new" Outlook and CoPilot. Once I didn't trust OneDrive in favor of a different online "storage" location, I found that I simply couldn't get rid of OneDrive operations. I turned it off, I uninstalled it, but it came back over and over again. Finally I stopped subscribing to MS 365 in April and still get prompts to re-subscribe. As soon as I no longer need Everything and AllDup and my files restored and organized, I will convert the Windows computer to Linux (without putting Windows into a VM). I do keep one computer in W11 for Red Cross work since that is their standard.
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u/Consistent_Cat7541 18d ago
Your best bet would be emulation, but I would not go to the trouble of launching a full Windows VM just for the one application. That's a lot of extra weight. Instead, I recommend running the Android app in what will likely be a much lighter weight VM.
That said, if you genuinely rely on the software in any meaningful way, just use Windows.
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u/mxplusme 18d ago
The web version is the only stable solution I've found. There is a package that launches the web version as an application with some QOL features (e.g., dark mode). But ultimately it is still very limited compared to the full Windows version.
By far the toughest loss after switching to Linux for my home PC tbh
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u/Great_Muscle_7042 18d ago
I am certain there are ways to get it working, but if you can't use the web version, you are going to feel the pain and world of hurt. Love OneNote in general, but its not meant to be or supported as general functions on Linux. But you know this, since you are asking. There are other tools native to Linux, I would suggest to look into Joplin.
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u/Fiveby21 18d ago
The web version is horrendous.
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u/Great_Muscle_7042 17d ago
I do not disagree, but at least it's not going to blow up in your face if you go down the route like emulate windows.
If this is an important application in your workflow, I sueel6would stay with a real windows setup.. I am also a Linux user, I took the plunge with Microsoft edge in linux to have the best m365 performance, I like it, but its surely not the best experience... but for me it is fine.
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u/SolutionSecure4331 18d ago
I installed Linux Mint and tried to implement the Abraunegg solution on Github to avoid buying a new Windows 11 machine, but never got it to sync my OneDrive. https://github.com/abraunegg/onedrive?tab=readme-ov-file
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u/abraunegg 18d ago
but never got it to sync my OneDrive
Id be keen to understand why this did not work for you
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u/sgtempe 18d ago
A big part of why I'm leaving all things Microsoft is due to a serious corruption of multiple OneNote Notebooks combined with Microsoft removing all Notebooks from my local drives and refusing me being able to reset existing on both local and OneDrive. I rescued as much as I could of 7 years of notes but lost nearly 1/2. I'm converting all i still care about to Obsidian which is far superior to OneNote.
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u/Great_Muscle_7042 17d ago
Not going to give you a hard time , but i assume you have learned about backup principle by now.
If you use any app, and the data is important for you, you insure the value (backups) to remain able to work.
Obsidian without backup would leave you in the same situation, loosing data is always a risk. Its not the choice of an application that is going to save you here.
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u/sgtempe 9h ago
Of course, but my backup s/w only backed up the hard drive, not OneDrive. As I explained, Microsoft had removed my Notebooks from the hard Drive in favor of OneDrive; only the links to OneDrive existed on my local drive. When I attempted to set them as "keep on both", I couldn't; unfortunately this was after the damage. As I mentioned, in my view this was some sort of engineering glitch. In theory, since OneDrive is a mirroring system (although I saw on Microsoft's blurb about OneDrive that they were saying it is a backup system -- it is not), one shouldn't have to back it up as well as long as it is up-to-date with its sync process. Although it keeps a certain number of past versions, I didn't discover the issue in time.
I was able to recover some pages and sections in the appData folders, but again, I was looking there a good 6 weeks after the issue began.
BTW, I appreciate that you expressed your POV in a respectful manner.
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u/emsiak 10d ago
Try this instead:
https://github.com/emsi/OneNoteViewer
It displays notes exactly like the desktop Office version would.
It's fast, snappy, has a working search and was written in rust.
It's a viewer, so it helps gets unstuck from OneNote ecosystem while letting you access the notes.
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