Teams on Linux

[Massimo B.]

Hi, what is the current way to use MS Teams on Linux? In the beginning I was using the native Linux application. When it was discontinued I switched to Web Teams in Chrome, running with a separate profile and installed as PWA. Firefox was not compatible in some functions and moreover has dropped the PWA native support.
Now I got to know there is https://teams.microsoft.com/v2/, I can use that URL in Chrome. Going to the old URL it also provides migrating to the new version. But I can't see any PWA anymore. Actually the new Teams works in Chrome, but I see all the toolbars are tab bars, when not running in fullscreen. Will there be a PWA? Isn't just any website being able to be installed as PWA?
That leads to the question, what is the benefit of a PWA? Only the feeling like using a native app without the browser decorations?

[fedeliallalinea]

For web application like teams I use Ferdium.
This allows me to have notifications in the systray and show/hide the application.

[spica]

Now I got to know there is https://teams.microsoft.com/v2/, I can use that URL in Chrome. Going to the old URL it also provides migrating to the new version. But I can't see any PWA anymore. Actually the new Teams works in Chrome, but I see all the toolbars are tab bars, when not running in fullscreen. Will there be a PWA? Isn't just any website being able to be installed as PWA?

I guess it is already installed and this is why it does not show the "Install" button. Instead of the "Install button", on my laptop it shows different button called "Open in Teams".

That leads to the question, what is the benefit of a PWA? Only the feeling like using a native app without the browser decorations?

The benefit of PWA is cost reduction for software manufacturers.

In the pre-PWA era, manufacturers produced native apprications, they hired ObjectiveC/Swift developers for ApplePhones, Android developers for GooglePhones, I-do-not-know-what-language on WinPhones, Java developers for Web experiece and so on – they had to spend a bunch of money to keep this huge zoo of different species of developers! Obviously, this approach to make a single application available on all platforms was extremely expensive.

PWA only needs html markup and js writing. Creating web pages was always cheaper than developing native applications. Employer can give a 15-minutes training to a random man picked on the street, and that man is ready to change html markup. This makes the things much cheaper for manufacturer. Extremely chaper. Without PWA you would not get ms teams experience on Linux platform at all, just because ms is not that company that spends money on native development for Linux.

[Massimo B.]

I understand the benefit of PWA compared to native apps. But what I asked is, if there is a benefit of PWA compared to a website? The Teams website already works. It also did with the old classic version, but there I installed it as PWA. On V2 I don't see any option to install as PWA anymore. Usually Chrome offers that in the menu.
I'm sure the PWA is not installed anymore, I explicitly uninstalled it, and I cleared all the cache of that profile, to be sure to start from scratch.

When I was using the v1 PWA, I was able to start my "Teams application" like this:

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exo-open /home/mb/.local/share/applications/chrome-cifhbcnohmdccbgoicgdjpfamggdegmo-Profile_2.desktop

and it feels like an application and not like a web browser. Only when opening another tab or clicking on some hyperlink it's opened in a new tabbed window of that already running browser instance.

[spica]

But what I asked is, if there is a benefit of PWA compared to a website?

There is only a benefit for software manufacturer.
End users see the same web page on their devices. What you call PWA is the same web page as if it was opened in regular chrome browser window.

When I was using the v1 PWA, I was able to start my "Teams application" like this:

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exo-open /home/mb/.local/share/applications/chrome-cifhbcnohmdccbgoicgdjpfamggdegmo-Profile_2.desktop

Any web-page can be opened in a so-called app-mode. https://teams.microsoft.com/v2/ is not an exception.

This is how to run ms teams on wayland desktop:

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$ google-chrome-stable  --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-platform-hint=wayland --ozone-platform=wayland --disable-extensions --disable-plugins --disable-sync -–no-experiments --app=https://teams.microsoft.com/v2/

[Massimo B.]

For web application like teams I use Ferdium.

What does that Ferdium actually do? Is that kind of a container? Or does it only collect notifications from sub-applications?
Only ebuild I found is from the 3rd party:

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 # eix -R ferdium
* net-im/ferdium-bin [1]
     Available versions:  ~6.3.0 {wayland}
     Homepage:            https://ferdium.org/
     Description:         Combine your favorite messaging services into one application

[1] "EmilienMottet" layman/EmilienMottet

[Banana]

I do have to use it. MS Edge and weburl. Nothing more and nothing less.

Maybe in the future they will release a native app, but this is kind of the "best" option.

[fedeliallalinea]

What does that Ferdium actually do? Is that kind of a container? Or does it only collect notifications from sub-applications?

It's a container for many web application with notification and systray support.
It is only available from third-party overlays, I keep it updated in my overlay (it is based on the ebuild you posted).

[Taigo]

Teams on Linux got discontinued?
Microsoft is so lazy they can't even continue to distribute an electron app to Linux?
Or it's simply to get more market share and give Windows the advantage since many people require Teams for their job or school.

[phil_r]

When I was using the v1 PWA, I was able to start my "Teams application" like this:

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exo-open /home/mb/.local/share/applications/chrome-cifhbcnohmdccbgoicgdjpfamggdegmo-Profile_2.desktop

Any web-page can be opened in a so-called app-mode. https://teams.microsoft.com/v2/ is not an exception.

This is how to run ms teams on wayland desktop:

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$ google-chrome-stable  --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-platform-hint=wayland --ozone-platform=wayland --disable-extensions --disable-plugins --disable-sync -–no-experiments --app=https://teams.microsoft.com/v2/

I tried this. What happens to me, regardless of which browser I use, is I'm able to sign in, then there's a page redirect about 5 times in quick succession then I get:

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To open the web app, change your browser settings to allow third-party cookies or allow certain trusted domains.

Obviously I've checked browser settings and 3rd party cookies are allowed and all MS sites are trusted, as per MS Teams' documentation.

I did wonder originally if it was something on my router blocking the connection, but surprise, if I boot to Windows it works...

[toralf]

That's my wrapper, works fine here (and even video calls to individuals seems to work);

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 $ cat ~/hlag/bin/ms-teams.sh 
#!/bin/bash
# set -x


set -euf
export LANG=C.utf8
export PATH="/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin"

#browser=microsoft-edge-stable
browser=google-chrome-stable

# --no-experiments
$browser --disable-extensions --disable-plugins --disable-sync --app-shell-host-window-size="1280,800" --window-size="1280,800" --new-window --app=https://teams.microsoft.com/v2 --enable-features=WebContentsForceDark,WebRTCPipeWireCapturer

[phil_r]

Thanks, I'll try that... I started building Chromium yesterday to try that but after 10 hours the compilation was still going

Firefox doesn't even get close to working, Vivaldi gives the error I pointed out in my last post and out of desperation I even installed Edge, which does the same thing as Vivaldi. Hopefully your wrapper will be successful for me...
Thanks!!!

[toralf]

Thanks, I'll try that... I started building Chromium yesterday to try that but after 10 hours the compilation was still going

Firefox doesn't even get close to working, Vivaldi gives the error I pointed out in my last post and out of desperation I even installed Edge, which does the same thing as Vivaldi. Hopefully your wrapper will be successful for me...
Thanks!!!

Maybe just test if google-chrome-stable make it for you before compiling chromium.

[phil_r]

Thanks, I'll try that... I started building Chromium yesterday to try that but after 10 hours the compilation was still going

Firefox doesn't even get close to working, Vivaldi gives the error I pointed out in my last post and out of desperation I even installed Edge, which does the same thing as Vivaldi. Hopefully your wrapper will be successful for me...
Thanks!!!

Maybe just test if google-chrome-stable make it for you before compiling chromium.

When I started it I thought it would just be a couple of hours... boy was I wrong.

I'm not at home right now so can't check on it, I'll be able to ssh in shortly and at least see if the compilation ended. Hopefully I'll get to test the wrapper around 6pm CST tonight.

[phil_r]

Well that didn't help - using Chromium and the wrapper I get the same thing, the authentication loops a few times after entering my password then I get the error telling me to allow 3rd party cookies or add trusted domains.

There's got to be something else wrong somewhere because all the browsers I've used are Chromium based but it works under Windows... I know this sounds stupid but is there anything in the kernel that might be misconfigured with regard to encryption or perhaps I'm missing a package somewhere that's needed? I can't think what else it could be.

[Zucca]

I would like to avoid installing any webkit/chrome packages just to have teams working... So anyone got it working with Firefox?

[Yamakuzure]

Will there be a PWA? Isn't just any website being able to be installed as PWA?

That was quite a hassle, because I wanted to use v2 on Linux and the PWA always switched back to "classic" before it got enforced by Microsoft a few weeks ago.
Here is what I did:

1. Installed Classic as PWA (you already got this?)
2. Installed a chrome extension to fake a different user agent
3. Set all microsoft.com URLs to fake newest Edge on Windows as user agent
4. Started teams, it allowed me to switch to v2
5. When Linux support for v2 got official, removed the user agent faker extension.

The bad thing is, that v2 does not seem to be installable as PWA any more, although it is supported. (At least I was not able to do it.)
So unless you still have the classic PWA installed (See [url]chrome://apps/[/url]) and can upgrade that, you can always add a wrapper like shown above.

I would like to avoid installing any webkit/chrome packages just to have teams working... So anyone got it working with Firefox?

When you try to access v2 with firefox, it will redirect you to Teams classic and then "run into an issue". At least it did so on my machine.

However, you can install "User Agent Switcher and Manager" extension, set it to white list mode, and apply latest Edge on Windows as the user agent to all microsoft.com URLs.
I tried it, and going on https://teams.microsoft.com/ (*NOT* /v2/ !), it let me log in. I then got a popup, that my organization was switching to the new teams, and asked whether I would follow.
Et voilà, Microsoft Teams V2 in Mozilla Firefox on Gentoo Linux.

[Banana]

When you try to access v2 with firefox, it will redirect you to Teams classic and then "run into an issue". At least it did so on my machine.

Yes, this is what I also observed.

[phil_r]

1. Installed Classic as PWA (you already got this?)

I didn't think it was available anymore, at least it got removed from Gentoo repos when MS stopped supporting it (the PWA). Is it still around someplace? (Sorry at work right now, options to search for it are limited)

[Massimo B.]

I didn't think it was available anymore, at least it got removed from Gentoo repos when MS stopped supporting it (the PWA). Is it still around someplace? (Sorry at work right now, options to search for it are limited)

Don't confuse the old PWA with the old Linux native client (Electron based) which was located in net-im/teams or net-im/teams-insiders and removed since a while. The old PWA was offered in the browser to install as PWA.

Ok, let's summarize:

Browsers:
Among the different browsers, only Chrome and Edge are fully functional. As I use www-client/google-chrome for Teams only and run it with a separate process and profile, would it have any benefit to use www-client/microsoft-edge instead? Reading about Microsoft Edge, it seems that it's also Chromium based today.
As for Firefox, some parts are already working, but it's still not fully functional even when faking the userAgent: https://github.com/webcompat/web-bugs/issues/118070

PWA:
I learned that any website can be run as PWA. A PWA actually is the website like running in the browser. Why do some pages offer the installation as PWA and some don't?
Starting an arbitrary website as PWA seems to be all about the option --app= as shown by some people with their wrapper scripts.
What does that actually do, does it locally download the content for using as PWA? Does it maintain that locally stored PWA for updates? Where is this --app documented, as google-chrome-stable --help does not mention it.
Same about that --enable-features option. From web-searching it seems that this option just targets the chrome://flags.
EDIT: An unofficial list of arguments for Google Chrome: https://peter.sh/experiments/chromium-c ... -switches/

Containers:
I still don't get the benefit of container solutions like Ferdium. Also their FAQ doesn't describe what it actually is. It containerizes everal applications into one providing systray and notifications? My window manager should support that as well. I already get notifications from Chrome. Having a Messenger app available on all desktop via Tray Icon is nice, but no basic requirement, and I can still achieve that via alltray.

[Banana]

Browsers:
Among the different browsers, only Chrome and Edge are fully functional. As I use www-client/google-chrome for Teams only and run it with a separate process and profile, would it have any benefit to use www-client/microsoft-edge instead? Reading about Microsoft Edge, it seems that it's also Chromium based today.

I do use edge because it should have the microsoft blessing and work better with teams

[Ralphred]

I have to use "Teams" later this week, so I consider activity in this thread being kind of serendipitous. It's the first and last time I'll use it.

What is the consensus regarding "easiest implementation" understanding that I have a "fully working environment" for other similar things such as discord, both web and client (which is just obfuscated web really), and to make zoom work I just installed the thing from the Gentoo portage tree (with most deps already satisfied, I think it was 4 atoms in total). I saw there is a client in Guru (described as an "electron wrapping of the web client") which I was just going to merge and go from there, but if the wise are watching this thread, well I'll happily be guided...

[phil_r]

I stumbled across:

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net-im/teams-for-linux

Wouldn't let me sign in at first, but tried again a day or two later and it started working fine (I have no idea what changed) and I use it a couple of times a week without any further issues.

[Massimo B.]

I do use edge because it should have the microsoft blessing and work better with teams

Actually you are perfectly right. If I'm running the separated browser process for Teams only, it doesn't hurt to use the MS blessed binary blob for that.

[Massimo B.]

What is the consensus regarding "easiest implementation" understanding that I have a "fully working environment" for other similar things such as discord, both web and client (which is just obfuscated web really), and to make zoom work I just installed the thing from the Gentoo portage tree (with most deps already satisfied, I think it was 4 atoms in total). I saw there is a client in Guru (described as an "electron wrapping of the web client") which I was just going to merge and go from there, but if the wise are watching this thread, well I'll happily be guided...

The first task is to get all media devices like headphones, microphone and camera running, which is already working for you. Next, just use Chrome and go to https://teams.microsoft.com/ (which could forward you to https://teams.microsoft.com/v2/, not sure what the current default is). If your Chrome is ready to use your media devices, then it will work out of the box.

About all the ebuilds for teams applications around: There is no official Teams client for Linux anymore. Can't find the official news but it was retired about December 2022. All still existing ebuilds are either old copies or new inofficial clones. Looking around what I find:

• net-im/teams-for-linux from guru Overlay: Unofficial client from https://github.com/IsmaelMartinez/teams-for-linux, Wrapper for the Web App as standalone application using Electron.
• net-im/teams from stuff Overlay: https://github.com/istitov/stuff/blob/m ... -r1.ebuild Obsolete

The upper might be the only working one but also just wraps the Web App. I don't see a reason to use that instead of a single browser process. My current wrapper after all the proposals is this, also encapsulating to the Tray using kdocker:

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$ kdocker google-chrome-stable --profile-directory="Profile 2" --disable-extensions --disable-plugins --disable-sync --new-window --app=https://teams.microsoft.com/v2 --proxy-server=proxy:8080 --enable-features=WebRTCPipeWireCapturer

Maybe I should remove the /v2 if this is the default now anyway for the main URL..

Usually I'm running EasyEffects on Pipewire to get better Echo cancelling, Bass enhancer and some effects for the microphone, therefore I also improved latency of my kernel by setting threadirqs: https://github.com/wwmm/easyeffects/issues/3224 But this is another topic, not about Teams but more about the audio setup itself. Usually Teams also has an integrated Noise cancelling and echo cancelling, but from my experience it doesn't work as good as the native Windows application. It also might be the Web version, but on Linux I can't use free speakers without getting bad feedbacks for the other party. On Windows it works perfectly when using the Laptop internal mic and speakers. I wasn't even able to cancel that with EasyEffects Echo Cancelling.