Developer gets Linux running inside Microsoft Excel, 'mostly for fun'

Developer NSG650 has succeeded in his attempt to get “Linux running in Excel.” The GitHub-hosted and aptly named LinuxInExcel project was uploaded to the cloud-based developer platform earlier this week, and updated with input support just yesterday.

Getting Linux to run within the confines of Excel is the latest in a long line of Excel coding gymnastics, which might only be rivaled by those boasting of running various incongruous software gems inside PDFs. And yes, we have already seen Linux running inside a PDF.

If you’ve read about these kinds of software feats previously, you'll know there is perhaps more than an ounce of trickery in running complex software like Linux within the confines of a spreadsheet application.

Developer NSG650 openly admits that his achievement leans heavily on a RISC-V emulator built by fellow GitHubber cnlohr. It also makes use of a Microsoft VBA macro to call the emulator in the DLL, which “gets the output and writes it into the cells in the spreadsheet.”

Using this emulation layer and software vector to run Linux takes a toll on performance – and stability doesn’t seem to be the best, either. NSG650 confirms LinuxInExcel is “very buggy,” but seems to be happy enough with achieving the software milestone, as it stands. It was “done mostly for fun,” says the Bangaluru-based developer in the GitHub readme.

Despite exhibiting little intention to refine his LinuxInExcel project, it has already seen an important improvement. Specifically, NSG650 thanks YouTuber Enderman (who hit our headlines in 2023 by tricking ChatGPT into generating Windows 95 keys) added interactivity by implementing input support.

Running Linux in Microsoft Excel - YouTube

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Also, thanks to the interest of Enderman, we have the above video to consume. The seven-minute clip walks us through installing Linux in Microsoft Excel and runs through “all the terminal basics,” to show LinuxInExcel behaving as you would expect. Enderman also gives a brief explanation about how this software feat works.

As with many such projects, one of the fun things is that you can give it a go yourself. All you need is at NSG650’s top-linked GitHub page, assuming you are on the Windows PC platform with a capable enough version of Excel, such as the one included with Office 2021.

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