I am also forced to use "productivity" software from MS, but I make do with the web versions on Linux at work. I hate it all, but it's okay. I am playing the long term game of trying to get my whole org to Linux. It helps that I can influence technical decisions, slow but steady process.

I don’t do corporate work on my home computer? I don’t know who’s suggesting corporate IT departments should convert everyone to Linux. “Work computer” and “home computer” are entirely separate use cases.

(Also a ton of MS Office work is being done through the web interfaces now anyway. I find the web versions pretty terrible but people seem to put up with them.)

> the reality is that I have to send, receive, and work in this application

Why? You can edit MS Office documents fine in LibreOffice and other similar software.

If you're working in a corporate environment, this may not be viable. LibreOffice is great software, but it's not 100% compatible. Things may look slightly different, get lost or otherwise cause problems. I've really tried, but at the end of the day I occasionally do need to use actual Microsoft Office.

Yep. And then there is Visio which gets used a lot where I work. LibreOffice Draw doesn't come anywhere near it. It saves a lot of grief just to give our Linux users a Windows VM with Office on it if they need to do any significant docs or drawings.

I used Word to write a reasonably complicated document that necessarily used tables. It was one of the most frustrating, bug inducing experiences of my life. I had to open the document and edit it in LibreOffice to get any sort of stability.

How do I join a live editing session of an Excel file with several people using regular Excel with LibreOffice?

I can't.

Or the same with PowerPoint.

I can't.

In a modern workspace it's not just local software running solely on just your local machine emailing around files or clobbering changes in some corporate file share.

Check out WinApps.

This looks interesting, how is the experience?