Linux on Wayland

An office suite for Wayland

Linux desktops have moved to Wayland, and some setups no longer carry an X server at all: kiosks, hardened workstations, minimal compositors. Microsoft does not ship desktop Word, Excel or PowerPoint for Linux. SumDoc (.docx) and SumSheet (.xlsx and .xlsm with VBA) run as native Wayland clients — on a session with no X server, and in the stock Wayland sessions of Debian 13 — with no flags and with the Chromium sandbox on.

Where it runs

Each row is the full circle a person needs: install the package, start the app, open a real file, change it, save it, open it again — and the change is there, verified inside the saved file, not only on screen.

In .xlsm workbooks the VBA project survives the round-trip byte for byte.

Chromium sandbox on

The apps run with the Chromium sandbox enabled and no --no-sandbox, through unprivileged user namespaces — checked on Debian 13 in both the GNOME and the KDE Plasma session. A workstation that forbids that switch can keep forbidding it.

Run it

Install the package and start the app from the applications menu, or from a terminal:

sumdoc      # SumDoc — .docx
sumsheet    # SumSheet — .xlsx and .xlsm

To see that the app talks to Wayland directly, start it with X11 out of reach — if the window opens, it is a native Wayland client:

env -u DISPLAY sumsheet

Get the apps

.deb for Debian and Ubuntu, .rpm for Fedora and other RPM distributions, AppImage for anything else, with SHA-256 checksums next to every version: download SumDoc and SumSheet, download SumSlide for presentations. No account, no key, no sign-up needed to work.

What survives a round-trip through SumSheet in a macro workbook, measured on a real file, is on Open an .xlsm without Excel. If you would rather not install anything, the same editors run in the browser: open a spreadsheet, open a document.

Questions people ask

Does it run without Xwayland?

Yes. On a Weston session with DISPLAY unset and no Xwayland process running, SumDoc and SumSheet start on Wayland with no flag, open a file, take an edit, save it and reopen it with the edit in place, verified inside the saved file.

Does it work on Debian 13?

Yes. In the stock KDE Plasma Wayland session of Debian 13 SumDoc and SumSheet start on Wayland with no flag and keep what you save; in the stock GNOME Wayland session SumSheet does the same. The apps run with the Chromium sandbox on, with no --no-sandbox, through unprivileged user namespaces, so a workstation that forbids that switch can keep forbidding it.

Is there a Linux version of Microsoft Word or Excel?

Microsoft does not publish desktop Word, Excel or PowerPoint for Linux. SumDoc, SumSheet and SumSlide are independent desktop editors for .docx, .xlsx/.xlsm and .pptx files that run on Linux, on X11 and on Wayland. They are not made by or affiliated with Microsoft.

What about LibreOffice on Wayland?

LibreOffice has its own Wayland support through its GTK and Qt backends. We do not test LibreOffice. SumOffice installs side by side with it, so you can keep both and use SumOffice for the Office files.

Is it free?

The desktop apps are free to download, with no account, no key and no sign-up needed to work. Running the editors as a server inside your own product is licensed separately: licensing.

Running a compositor or distribution that is not in the table? Tell us which one — that is how the next row gets added to this page.

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