Using Linux since 2008 ish… (As non IT user), I recommend going and route, and using pop os (or bazzite which people say also works well but is personally haven’t tried), I am currently using tuxedo os on my laptop but my pop os journey for your use case on the home machine has been the smoothest, and if you go do route which I did, I had never thought about any driver issues… The only thing in pop (which I haven’t updated for a year now, yeah life got crazy), was that always do apt get updates / upgrades as pop OS’s package manager gui used to get stuck sometimes, once the terminal completes the updates then use the GUI to update the pop os things. Other than this small hiccup, never had to do anything else. (Oh yeah when buying hardware some people told me that getting the latest and greatest cutting edge sometimes takes time for the kernel to catch up to the optimizations of drivers, but I always bought 1 or 2 gen behind the latest and never had any issues, I mostly play Indy games other than 1/or 2 like Tekken series at 2k monitor so I never cared about 4k 120 or above fps.)

I had system76 and now on tuxedo. I will buy tuxedo again…

Long story short, look at system76 and tixedo computers. I used to use s76 bit now I use tux, couldn’t be happier. (I come from a long era of thinkpads…)

I have a 10 years+ of this experience… There are a few things, you can DM me if you want to go in details. Here is a list in no particular order.

1.My host machine is always been system76 or tuxedo computers and OSs have been Ubuntu, Manjaro, pop os, Debian And a fee others. deb based have worked very well for me… .

2. I have a VM that is setup as a work machine of Windows 11.

3. My 2nd client is a control freak so they sent me a laptop which is sitting permanently in my closet connected to a raspberry pi with a hat. Its basically a KVM over IP. My machine /phone/tablet is part of my private virtual home network so I can jump into that machine with any of those devices with just a browser.

4. From your Linux host machine dedicate one browser altogether to office e.g. if you use Firefox dedicate a Chromium to that office. Bonus points if that browser is in a docker :) then you have no cookie mixing and is a cleaner setup. From this dedicated browser use “login. Microsoft. Com” without spaces ofc, and can use all apps (if the admin has allowed it from your comoany) and there is no hyper overkill intune or other Mac address / machine name related shenanigans setup by your company admin.

In my story, it started before 2010, I tried the Linux (Ubuntu) host and wine based office apps and that was slower than (and had issues other than slowness, I sometimes have 200mb+ of excel files with is text only CSV before I convert them into something sensible) and VM based workflow was faster and more stable. TBH I didn’t delve into wine based apps since then because the work/clients logging also get machine info. Etc… In a VM I can control most of it and in a kvm over ip, it’s completely stealth. You can connect a Macbook pro m3 for the heck of it on that KVM setup and no one would have any idea (apart from hardware name of monitor and keyboard mouse names, which you can go extra mile and change if you really want to)… (FYI I am not an IT person so apologise in advance for the above if this is an overkill, this tipic is dear to my heart and is a hobby so to speak, so happy to help if you DM me)

In the new plasma/Wayland it is pretty dope… I make 4 desktops per activity in a matrix shape and use 2 activities work and home and it’s pretty easy to zip a out in the OS and switch activities and desktops with muktifinger scroll, and shortcuts for desktops and activity switching…

Interface tailoring, desktop tapestry, jamming all up in my pazaaz.