Long story short, because of the security issues with Wine and on top of that not currently being able to update Office (which is a security issue in and of itself), I rolled back using my image and currently just have my Xubuntu laptop as a secondary laptop...With it I will try Thunderbird and GnuCash as other options while keeping my other laptop running Windows and slowly weening myself off MS.
Sounds like a good plan to me!
After all, most of us didn't ditch Windows prior to the first install of Linux. Neither did I, began with a dual boot of XP Pro & Linux MInt 7 on one notebook (the only computer I had at the time), and slowly began running Linux Mint more & more. I did try Xubuntu, just didn't like the appearance, yet what may not suit me may be perfect for another, so don't let that discourage you.
To be honest, have never installed MS Office on Linux Mint, though intended to install Office 2007 just to see how it ran, changed my mind, my security is more important than tinkering. Someone suggested a Silverlight replacement in Pipelight, and I installed having no idea that it would also install WINE, had to purge all. Used the inbuilt Disk Analyser to ensure that all remnants of WINE were gone, if not & couldn't remove, would had performed a clean install.
Cat: Thanks for the welcome! Any advice you can give to a noob would be appreciated
tmoca, you're quite welcome, that's what we're here for. Should you need assistance with an issue, always feel free to create a Topic & we'll do our best to help.
Cat