Windows 10 boots up very quickly in VM, especially if you remove all bloatware and auto-login. Now this sounds like a crap solution but just try it and you might be surprised. This will give you an almost seamless experience on a decent PC. Make sure you install the VirtualBox Extension Pack on host and Guest Additions within VM to allow seamless resizing, drag and drop files and shared clipboard with host. I pass through my audio and microphone to the VM. This is also how I use MS office 2016 on Linux.Īll I do is use VirtualBox to create a Windows 10 VM with a little bit of RAM and 2 CPUs and install Skype4B + Office on it and Outlook online to get emails, calendar and links to Skype4B meetings. OK so this is a work-around but it works surprisingly well for me as I very rarely need to share my Linux host screen, or if I do, then its just a MS Office doc which is easy to share within VM.

For a long time I have used the method below to run MS software.

But some corporations could be over a decade slow in upgrading (many still use Lync 2007!).

Good news is that MS is replacing Skype4B with MS Teams which has a web and native Linux binary already.

The other nail in the coffin is that MS will reportedly discontinue Skype4B support in mid 2021.Skype4B was always just a renamed version of the very old Microsoft Lync software which works totally differently to Skype regular (which was originally a separate company later purchased by MS).

The software is 'Skype' by brand name only, and has nothing to do with regular Skype which already works on Linux.

It's annoying, but I am almost certain MS will never make Skype4B available on Linux.

Here is my latest advice about running Skype4B aka Lync on Linux:

Skype for business web app install mac