Microsoft Teams (heresy, you say?) - first topic

[BarriBurt]

Greetings all,

I've been exploring Linux with my home PC with Pop! os, wherein I've been keeping Windows as a VM under QEMU/KVM as a last-resort for some tasks.

My work PC remains Windows, and I'm in a team administering a fleet with MCM, ZENworks, some Azure stuff. Linux has been quite interesting on the home PC, so I've dual booted the work laptop and am on my own time exploring having the secondary boot Linux OS (currently Ubuntu) gradually adapted to be capable of doing my work - probably hosting some test VMs with our Windows SOE using QEMU with KVM (or something better, if I find something better). If it gets there, cool. It's just an experiment.

But when in Linux I'd expect to get calls over Microsoft Teams. Did not see a way to run a local client of it - MS's website advertises they have something called a Persistent Web App (PWA) for Teams on Linux now. But you can click Download and be linked to a mobile app, which is... funny, but not helpful.

I got our work browser (Microsoft Edge) into it by downloading the .deb installer from MS and running that with Ubuntu's Software Updater, that worked, so I can probably try just using Teams in that browser soon. Could be a case of "Good enough", but does anyone understand what the PWA is supposed to bring? And how to get it?

I've quite a few other questions, but intend to keep them for other topics. Quick search of the Linux.org forum found nothing about setting up MS Teams, probably not a common request here. But there you have it. I'm open to alternatives if there's something else that can communicate with Teams - we are not moving to Linux as an org, this is just me experimenting.

 

[Condobloke]

G'day BarriBurt, Welcome to Linux.org

Where in Australia?

We have members from all over the world, so therefore in different time zones.

An answer to your thread is not something I know anything about, but there are many members who will take an interest, I am sure.

Welcome !

 

[wizardfromoz]

Sorry Barri, just re-read this after Brian posted, so I'll leave it here.

 

[wizardfromoz]

Take a wander through

https://alternativeto.net/software/microsoft-teams/

and look for the ones that feature the word Linux - might be something there.

Chris

 

[BarriBurt]

I found it!
You click the little boxes icon when in a Teams browser tab. Click that and Poof! you get a new window with less stuff around it.

Sorry, crimped most of it out, but I'll share the top bit. It's a separate, Teams-only window. So that must be the PWA. Seems a bit like a .htm file or something.

Thanks for the welcome btw guys. Yes, Australia, NSW, Northern Rivers - up in the far north east of the state.

Cheers WizardfromOz for the Alternative site, it mentions Slack can be integrated with Teams. Pity I don't control the back end of Teams for this org but we did have a cloud manager who loved slack 5 years ago, so maybe he had it set up. I'll play around a bit more and see where this all goes.

 

[bob466]

Welcome to the Forum.

 

[f33dm3bits]

I use the community version of Teams since you are then still able to run Teams as a desktop application.

GitHub - IsmaelMartinez/teams-for-linux: Unofficial Microsoft Teams for Linux client

Unofficial Microsoft Teams for Linux client. Contribute to IsmaelMartinez/teams-for-linux development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

 

[MikeWalsh]

@BarriBurt :-

Hm. If I've got my thinking-cap on correctly, as far as I understand it, a Progressive Web App is kind of an 'enhanced' version of what Chrome has offered for many years.

With Chrome, you've long been able to set any given website to 'fire-up' in its own window, completely separate from the parent browser. It's still running via the browser itself, of course, but you only see the website you've set to open up. It won't navigate through to other websites, for example, because it's "locked" to that one URL / domain.

This being the case, it means you can set-up a Menu entry to open this one "app" by itself. I've long had my own Linux version of Microsoft's NetFlix app, so I can just fire-up NetFlix for a quick binge without getting distracted by any of the other tabs I might have open.....

When I first figured-out the way to integrate this into Puppy Linux, about 7 years ago, an acquaintance on our forums informed me that, essentially, I had unwittingly developed the Puppy version of what devs at Peppermint Linux had for a while been doing with their own distro!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
​

(Example:- All these "Electron" apps you hear about? The Electron app platform is based around a minimal, stripped-back build of the Chromium browser - the 'parent' of Chrome itself - along with various other bits'n'bobs that permit writing an application that will run identically, regardless of whether you use it on the desktop OR in the browser. The platform is pretty mature by now, and has been running for some years......and is quite popular with developers.

For instance, look at the web version and desktop client builds of Skype4Linux. You'll soon see what I'm talking about.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

The PWA just takes this to the next step, further enhancing the experience by integrating operation with the rest of your desktop environment. I've said it before; although I don't like them, the Chromebook idea IS a good one. We've long since reached the stage where it doesn't matter what desktop client / application you want to run, someone, somewhere, will have developed / built an online web version of it. And with many machines having dollops of RAM / huge amounts of storage nowadays, allied to powerful CPUs that are easily capable of multi-tasking / multi-processing, all you really need is a lightweight, secure Linux distro and an up-to-date browser.......and you can perform any & every task you would with a traditional system.

It's called "progress", whether you agree with that assessment or not.


Mike.

 

[MikeWalsh]

Gotta confess, I can't for the life of me see what's so great about 'Teams'.

Why pay for a yearly M$ 365 subscription, when there's a thousand and one great alternatives out there.....almost all of which are not only free to download, but also free to use?

The 'logic' escapes me, I'm sorry to say. Once again, Microsoft appear to have managed to con an entire demographic into believing that their way is the ONLY 'secure' way.....

Still, when all's said & done, I've always been a believer in using whatever works for you as an individual.....irrespective of platform. There's no getting away from the fact that some Windows apps/programs just DO work 'better' than any other. In other use-cases, Linux will run rings around anything developed for Redmond's platform.

"Swings & roundabouts", don'tcha know?


Mike.

 

[BarriBurt]

Enterprise, of course. Our group had an anti-Microsoft technology architect for some years (he's gone now), which lead to us using a range of less-common products - some better than the more mainstream (often Microsoft) options in many ways, others not. But we merge & unmerge with other government groups somewhat often and IT gets dragged around in the process. So going with less common solutions in our space hits two big drawbacks: You're less compatible with everyone else, and you have more trouble finding new hires with skills in your less-common technology choices.

Not like it's my choice really. With any big org you can have some influence, but there's lots of other people, and lots of other considerations besides.

 

[sphen]

Imagine this scenario:

A company replaces its in-house self-managed office automation server with Microsoft 365 (formerly "Office 365"). The value prospect and related cost savings seem intuitive and obvious, so they sign up. Before long, Microsoft 365 begins to cause problems and consume more resources than anticipated. Microsoft 365 imposes forced changes on the company's longstanding and effective workflow patterns. The company panics and wants to bail, only to find that they are "sufficiently pregnant" and it would take a separately planned project just to extricate themselves from Microsoft 365 and all the unanticipated issues and expenses to deal with them. They stay with Microsoft 365 and cope, unhappy with their decision.

I wonder whether the decision to migrate a small office to Microsoft 365 can be treated as an "anti-pattern"? (An anti-pattern is a pattern of behavior that leads to failure. It may start with what looks like a good decision or choice.)

 

[defragmenteur]

The official Microsoft client is dead since end 2022. If the web / pwa version is not enough, there is an unofficial client here. It was working last year on arch. Don't know now.

 

[f33dm3bits]

The official Microsoft client is dead since end 2022. If the web / pwa version is not enough, there is an unofficial client here. It was working last year on arch. Don't know now.

I already mentioned the community version of Teams several replies ago.

I use the community version of Teams since you are then still able to run Teams as a desktop application.

GitHub - IsmaelMartinez/teams-for-linux: Unofficial Microsoft Teams for Linux client

Unofficial Microsoft Teams for Linux client. Contribute to IsmaelMartinez/teams-for-linux development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

 

[bwingbob]

@BarriBurt I am in a similar situation to you. I have a laptop running Pop!_OS with a Windows10 virtual machine, just in case. My client uses Microsoft Office for everything.

I installed the PWA for both Teams and Outlook and they work pretty much seamlessly on my Pop machine. Pretty much all of our meetings are Teams and I have had zero issues, all Teams functions seem to work without issue.

I still need to boot the VM on occasion, mostly for OneNote, but that's rare.

Bob

 

[ML_113]

I saw this

How to Install TeamViewer on Debian 12, 11 or 10

Navigating remote access tools, TeamViewer emerges as a frontrunner, offering versatility and reliability. For Debian enthusiasts, integrating TeamViewer can el

www.linuxcapable.com

As for us I use Google Meet (Chrome browser, Puppy Linux) , one of my daughter use Mac, another use iPhone - we communicate weekly without problem.

 

[pepdebian]

I think... I may be wrong about this but MozilIa started the whole SSB thing with prism
Here is quick read about it:

Firefox’s Site Specific Browser

Firefox 73 has a built-in server-specific browser mode.

suffix.be

Its a shame they dropped the whole SSB feature altogether though

 

[MikeWalsh]

I saw this

How to Install TeamViewer on Debian 12, 11 or 10

Navigating remote access tools, TeamViewer emerges as a frontrunner, offering versatility and reliability. For Debian enthusiasts, integrating TeamViewer can el

www.linuxcapable.com

As for us I use Google Meet (Chrome browser, Puppy Linux) , one of my daughter use Mac, another use iPhone - we communicate weekly without problem.

Ab-so-lutely.

Browser-based video-chat clients are a far better option for cross-platform compatibility. Even where the app in question HAS a desktop client, I still prefer the web-based version - what these days is now often called a PWA, or Progressive Web App - because it's more or less guaranteed to work, regardless of platform.

The only 'fly in the ointment' CAN be getting audio functional on a desktop rig.....because unlike smartphones or laptops/netbooks, etc, which all have built-in microphones, and automatically set this as the 'default', most desktop rigs don't HAVE a 'built-in' microphone. More & more of these video-chat apps now only offer the 'Default' option, necessitating the need to set this up on a desktop rig, prior to use, at the global/system level FIRST. Especially in my case, where the webcam supplies the video-feed, but I DON'T want to use the webcam's microphone ('cos they're invariably very poor quality). Instead, I want to use the 'boom' mike on my headset.

Involves a bit of juggling!

That said, my two favourites are either Google's 'Meet', or Jitsi 'Meet'. Both work flawlessly.


Mike.

 

[ML_113]

most desktop rigs don't HAVE a 'built-in' microphone.

The rig I set up is an Acer C720 Chromebook, an absolute junk software wise, when G stopped it from using Chrome. Puppy saved the day, I didn't even have to buy a new webcam. I own several desktops or laptops but the webcams are old and of very lousy quality.

 

[BarriBurt]

I already mentioned the community version of Teams several replies ago.

Oh yes, and thanks for that. The PWB seemed ok when I tried it but it's good to have that alternative to fall back on.