To link images is the gold standard, not just in Publisher and InDesign, but also in Word. I tell my customers to always link their images to the Word file, not to embed them. Linked images don't loose quality, this technique helps keeping the file size of the Word file (ID, Pub) small.
However, when I try to import a Word document with linked images into Publisher ... Publisher freezes.
1.8.0.523 and older versions. Win 10.