TEAMS and LINUX: The Future is Now!

[Aubrey Marshall]

Using Microsoft TEAMS in a web browser and getting the same level of capabilities as the Windows Desktop client has been limited at best, especially for Linux users. The inability to video conference or share desktops and applications or give presentations usually makes using TEAMS on Linux a no go.  

Using Linux myself to host my VMs for various OSes, the need to be able to use TEAMS and other Office 365 tools on Linux is quite high. It’s not always convenient to boot a Windows VM for a meeting or send emails or collaborate with a Team mate. Fortunately, and surprisingly this is no longer the case when using TEAMS on Linux. But to enable this new level of functionality requires just a bit of effort on the end user’s part. 

By using Chromium or Chrome browsers and making a few settings tweaks an installing a single browser extension you can achieve near parity with the Windows desktop client. You should be able to make in-private video calls, give presentations and use other functionality not previously possible in TEAMS for Linux users. 

Unfortunately, there has not been enough time to completely vet this as thoroughly as desired to identify what is or is not working once these changes are made. So, hopefully the TEAMS community will tackle this and update this site accordingly with their findings. 

Please keep in mind that you will need to have the appropriate TEAMS and sharing settings enabled in your Office 365 tenant. Also, for expediency sake this article will not be getting into the minutiae of the following step by step procedure for TEAMS on Linux. 

To get started there are a few required resources that you will need to have so just follow the step by step to get going. 

Step 1: Download and install one of the browsers listed below. 

1. Chrome for Linux 
2. Chromium for Linux 

Step 2: Install the following extension from the Google Webstore. 

1. User Agent Switcher for Chrome 

Step 3: Add one or both of the following user agent strings to the “User Agent Switcher for Chrome”. This will allow you to switch to the desired one that works for your system. 

1. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/64.0.3282.140 Safari/537.36 Edge/17.17134 
2. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/51.0.2704.79 Safari/537.36 Edge/14.14393X 

Step 4: Click the User Agent Switcher and choose your Edge browser string. This should remain selected until you change it to something else or back to the browser default. 

Step 5: Open the Chrome browser, in the address bar type Chrome://flags and hit the Enter key. In the search box provided, search for each of the settings below. Set each one to ENABLED. 

1. Hardware Acceleration 
   1. Override software rendering list: ENABLED 
2. PWA 
   1. Enable PWA full code cache: ENABLED 
   2. Desktop PWAs: ENABLED 
   3. Desktop PWAs Link Capturing: ENABLED 
3. WEBRTC 
   1. Negotiation with GCM cipher suites for SRTP in WebRTC: ENABLED 
   2. Negotiation with encrypted header extensions for SRTP in WebRTC: ENABLED 
   3. WebRTC Stun origin header: ENABLED 
   4. WebRTC Echo Canceller 3: ENABLED 
   5. WebRTC new encode cpu load estimator: ENABLED 
   6. WebRTC H.264 software video encoder/decoder: ENABLED 
4. Downloads 
   1. Parallel downloading: ENABLED 
5. Verify that Setting work. 
   1. Open Microsoft Teams in your browser.  
   2. Start a private chat with someone and verify that the video chat icon switches from grey to purple and white. If so, you can start making video calls and you should also be able to make presentation.  

One quick note; this same procedure should also work on Windows and MAC but further testing is required for these platforms. 

Enjoy! 

[#2]

Indeed. I see that it works in Brave browser without any additional settings.

[#3]

Looks like MS is working on a linux client :

https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/16911565-linux-client

Wonder if that's really the case.  I'll have to see it to believe it !

[#4]

Just!! love this Teams app from Microsoft for Linux platform. Thank you Microsoft..

[#5]

Hi All,  today I have found if a person has setup a meeting with "Skype for business" then you will not be able to join that meeting with Microsoft teams(on Linux platform). 

Can someone please help to resolve this issue. As few of my clients are still using Skype for Business and they use to setup a meeting with the same only.

Many Thanks!!

sudheermmpp

[#6]

@Aubrey Marshall 

It seems that MSFT could consider a standalone app instead of hacking chrome. Take a gander at the implementation of Slack since that's what Teams should be/is going up against. if we didn't have MS branded on our flanks we'd most likely be using Slack. 

BTW, this didn't work.

[#7]

@Aubrey Marshall 

MS delivered, see https://teams.microsoft.com/downloads. Just installed and ran the app on Pop!_OS 19.10 and it works like a charm, including video.

Cheers, A.