A lone dev managed to run a Linux computer in an Excel spreadsheet

By Matthew Griffin Computing 2nd June 2025

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

If you can run a computer or process in something that’s sometimes amazing, but it’s also a cyber risk.

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As the “can it run Doom” phenomenon clearly demonstrates, people will try to do the weirdest things with extensible, accessible software platforms and applications to run, for example Doom in bacterial displays, and even create giant Meta computers in Minecraft made out of Redstone or create computers in bacteria and even humans. Excel, a program with powerful computation capabilities that’s been around for almost 40 years, is no different. And it can seemingly run Linux.

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A lone developer known as “NSG650” recently unveiled the Linux In Excel project, which, as you might guess, forces the Linux kernel to run within a Microsoft Excel environment.

The project isn’t exactly groundbreaking, and the Linux experience it provides is, by the developer’s own admission, quite buggy. Nonetheless, it’s worth mentioning as yet another hacking feat that no other coder has dared – or even thought – to attempt.

Learn more about it

Linux In Excel leverages mini-rv32ima, an open source project designed to implement the RISC-V instruction set in an emulated environment. The mini-rv32ima emulator provides a partial RISC-V implementation. It consists of about 400 lines of actual code and is built as a single DLL program that can be easily managed as a simple external dependency.

All things considered, NSG650 created a VBA macro that loads the mini-rv32ima emulated environment into Excel, captures its output, and writes it into the spreadsheet’s cells. The developer admits to “cheating,” as he didn’t rewrite the emulator in VBA or Excel formulas – a theoretically achievable goal given enough time, resources, and stubborn determination.

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Still, Linux In Excel manages to provide a buggy, slow, yet “authentic” Linux shell experience. Another developer, Enderman, contributed by adding proper input support and recorded a YouTube video which you can see above explaining how he ran Linux in Excel while struggling with VBA’s syntax.

Microsoft Excel can be considered as the major computing and calculation platform of the software world. Despite its many limitations and inaccuracies with very long numeric values, Redmond’s legendary product is routinely exploited to run weird hacks and projects such as a fully functioning 16-bit CPU.

Furthermore, NSG650 has been working to bring the Linux kernel to the most unconventional computing environments imaginable. In 2023, the programmer developed the BugCheck2Linux utility, which runs Linux after Windows crashes to a BSOD. Even then, NSG650 relied on readily available open source projects like mini-rv32ima and ReactOS to achieve his goal.

Matthew Griffin / About Author

Described by NASA as a "Walking Encyclopaedia of the Future" and one of the world’s most in demand keynote speakers Matthew Griffin, Founder and Futurist in Chief of the 311 Institute, a global Futures and Deep Futures advisory firm, is a multi-award winning Futurist and strategic foresight expert, author, lecturer, mentor, podcast and YouTube host.

With a distinguished career running global business units at Atos, EMC, and IBM today Matthew helps leaders and titans of industry from all over the world explore the impact of the inter sections of technology, culture, and leadership, then helps them create high performance organisations that can continuously disrupt, outpace, and outthink their competition.

15 times author of the hit series the Codex of the Future series Matthew's ability to identify, track, and explain the impacts of hundreds of emerging technologies and trends on global business, culture, and society has earned him a powerful reputation and a roster of clients that include royal households, world leaders across the G7, G20, and G77, and many of the world's most recognised and exceptional organisations including ABB, Accenture, ABN Amro, Adidas, AON, ARM, BCG, Centrica, Citi Group, Coca Cola, Deloitte, Dentons, Disney, Dow, EY, Google, KPMG, Lego, Microsoft, Legal & General, LinkedIn, Nokia, Paramount, PepsiCo, PWC, Qualcomm, RWE, Samsung, T-Mobile, UBS, Visa, WIRED, WPP and hundreds of others.

Matthew is regularly featured in the global media including the AP, BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, Discovery, Forbes, Khaleej Times, Telegraph, TIME, ViacomCBS, WIRED, and the WSJ, and his mission is to help organisations create a fair and sustainable future whose benefits are shared by everyone irrespective of their ability, background, or circumstances.