# Bottles creator Mirko Brombin pursues native Microsoft Office on Linux, criticizes UI clones

> **Key takeaway:** Mirko Brombin is actively working to run genuine Microsoft Office through Bottles rather than promoting open-source alternatives, while criticizing recent applications that clone Adobe and Microsoft interfaces pixel-for-pixel.

**Published:** 2026-10-25T10:02:06+00:00 
**Source:** It's FOSS Community News 
**Category:** distro-news 
**Canonical URL:** https://fosswire.org/news/bottles-creator-mirko-brombin-pursues-native-microsoft-offic.html 

## Summary
Mirko Brombin, creator of the Wine front-end Bottles and founder of Vanilla OS, is prioritizing efforts to make genuine Microsoft Office run reliably on Linux through his Bottles project. In a recent interview, Brombin expressed his view that applications which clone proprietary interfaces like Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop down to individual pixels cross an ethical line, even as he pursues compatibility with the actual proprietary software. He also discussed his full-time role at fabricators, his research project Amus exploring alternatives to current large language models, and the transition of Vanilla OS to community-run status with the recent release of Vanilla OS 3 Reunion featuring ARM support.

Brombin detailed his nuanced approach to using AI agents in development, emphasizing that he maintains strict architectural control and reviews every line of AI-generated code. He described his skepticism toward LLMs' lack of explicit, verifiable reasoning processes, which motivated his Amus research into more transparent knowledge representation. On Vanilla OS, he noted that the project now operates with multiple team members and infrastructure support from fabricators, allowing him to step back from direct maintenance while the distribution continues receiving security and stability updates.

## Brombin's technical priorities and AI methodology
- **Bottles and Office compatibility:** Brombin is actively working to get Microsoft Office running through Bottles, positioning genuine proprietary software compatibility as preferable to interface clones that replicate Microsoft and Adobe products pixel-for-pixel.
- **Vanilla OS 3 Reunion:** The distribution added ARM support and introduced the Vanilla OS SDK, which was used to rewrite fundamental components to share a single common foundation; the project now operates as community-run with fabricators maintaining server infrastructure.
- **AI agent workflow:** Brombin provides AI agents with his own architectural documentation, conventions, and constraints rather than allowing them to invent structure, and manually reviews every line of generated code.
- **Amus research project:** Brombin is developing an alternative to current LLMs focused on making knowledge relationships and reasoning steps explicit, persistent, and causally verifiable rather than statistically plausible.
- **Sinty OS development:** Brombin continues building Singularity OS (referred to as Sinty OS), an operating system with its own desktop environment and approach to immutability, alongside his other projects.

## Why it matters
Brombin's stance on prioritizing genuine Microsoft Office over LibreOffice or interface clones highlights ongoing tensions in the Linux desktop ecosystem about proprietary software compatibility versus free software principles. His approach to AI-assisted development, with strict architectural guardrails and manual code review, offers a model for other maintainers navigating AI tooling while his Amus research could eventually provide more trustworthy alternatives for open-source projects wary of opaque LLM outputs.