Starting today, Microsoft Teams is available for Linux users in public preview, enabling high quality collaboration experiences for the open source community at work and in educational institutions. ...
Updated Nov 09, 2023
Version 4.0
Blog Post
I've been using Teams on Linux for about a year now. On the plus side it is nice that there is a native version that is more powerful than the web client. On the minus side, it's increasingly lacking in essential features and the meeting experience is increasingly falling behind the Windows version:
- Raise Hands is working on and off. Usually in a meeting I keep my phone open with the iOS version of Teams, so that I can reliably see when someone is raising their hand.
- Screen Sharing shares only whole desktops, not windows. Consequently, when using Teams and sharing something, there is no way to see the other meeting participants or use the meeting chat.
- Breakout Rooms are not working.
- Backgrounds are not working.
- You can't see more than 4 video feeds. Gallery View is not working, let alone Large Gallery view or Together mode
I get the feeling that a lot of these are limitations of the technology used - it feels like it's essentially a web client - and that some of these things will never be fixed. It does not help that the Windows version is advancing quite fast, so the gap seems to be growing and the Linux team might not be able to catch up.
This does not bode well for seeing other Office 365 applications on Linux. It looks like we will have to continue to use virtual machines for basic office collaboration for quite some more time.