The Ungraven

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While I Pondered

(If you are not familiar with Microsoft Teams, or if you do not have to use it in your daily work, you should count yourself lucky.)

The Microsoft Teams - Preview client—whatever “preview” is supposed to mean—is functional enough, with probably a few exotic features missing, and the core features intact. (This is arguably true of almost every Microsoft product ever, excepting Excel, at which they....) At some point, they stopped all development and updates; we’ll get back to their “solution” for that, mere moments from now.

Weak and Weary

A third-party developer decided to make—again, pun intended—something called teams-for-linux, which is an unofficial Electron-based wrapper (no, not the HiPhop kind—that is spelled rapper) around the official Teams web client. (I recently learned this is also how the Fastmail app for Linux works—although I [of course] have submitted feature requests for native DEB/RPM versions as well as the ability to customise the taskbar icon for the existing Electron app—it’s currently a generic grey box with a blue thingy on top.)

The unofficial Teams for Linux works well enough, for what it is. I chose the native DEB version at first. It soon broke after some other upgrade, so I switched to the AppImage version. That worked OK, but it had the annoying habit of staying stuck on one monitor, and it could only be minimised or maximised. Still, it worked.

Upon further reading, I found that Microsoft’s “plan” for Linux users is to force them to use the so-called Progressive Web App, or PWA. Without getting into a lot of technical details, this means visiting a website—but one which looks and feels more like a native application.⁰

Over Many a Quaint...

Given I was unable to work around the “cannot minimise or move the window” issue in ten minutes or less (I think the developer failed to implement something correctly), I decided the PWA might work better for me. What I did not know, at first, is that Progressive Web Apps are optimised for Chromium-based browsers, although they can be forced to work with Firefox.

“Firefox?!” you may be wondering to yourself. Well, I’ll have you know that my main workflow relies on some Firefox-specific extensions—or should I say, one extension in particular which works on multiple browsers, but is fully functional on Firefox while being only 99⁴⁴⁄₁₀₀% functional on Chrome, Brave, etc. My natural assumption had been “the Microsoft Teams site will work smoothly on Firefox.” That assumption was woefully incorrect. However, it works perfectly in Microsoft Edge—a Chromium-based browser.¹ (I suppose it probably works well in Chrome, or Chromium itself, too; but I reserve those browsers for other uses.)

...and Curious Volume of...

I now prefer the PWA version of Teams to the standard app, not only on Linux but also on Windows. Not only can you pin the “app” to the menu or taskbar as though it were a normal app, you can also run multiple simultaneous instances! This is handy for, say, pretending to join a meeting in one instance whilst getting actual work done in another.

The rant has ended: Vaya con Dios.

[Epilogue] Forgotten Lore²

At first, I was interested only in the question: How can I run Microsoft Teams on Linux? Once I began digging further, I found out more about Progressive Web Apps (PWA) than even I wanted to know. (You, Dear Reader, surely want to know even less than I did.)

I found out that I wanted to run not only Teams but also Outlook, Apple Music, Apple Classical, Fastmail (affiliate link³), and Raindrop.io. While using the PWA form of each of these sites was the only reasonable option for me (there are no native Linux applications for these sites/apps), you may also find it useful on Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS (iPhone/iPad), depending on your situation. PWAs use less storage—often significantly so—than an installed app; further, some PWAs seem to perform better than the native app. Teams is a good example of this—even on Windows, oddly enough. Further, because PWAs are a type of website, they do not require updating, ever: they are always running whatever the latest version is, by default.

I encourage you to try a PWA for yourself, no matter which type of device and operating system you’re using!

[Endnotes] Nevermore

0. This reminds me of my longstanding, somewhat tongue-in-cheek complaint that most mobile apps are essentially YAWB—Yet Another Web Browser—but locked down to a specific provider. The assertion is not quite true, in that mobile apps can and often do take advantage of more direct access to the available hardware; yet for many situations a so-called responsive site—one which automatically adjusts its layout and design so it looks and works well on any device—would do just fine, saving not only development time but also space on your mobile device. The Kermudgeon is a good example of such a site: if you normally use the site it on a mobile device, try it on a laptop. You can also emulate using a mobile device on your desktop or laptop by pressing Ctrl+Shift+M in Chrome or Firefox or Cmd+Opt+R in Safari. Most finance, weather, shopping, social media, and general information sites would work fine as responsive sites instead of apps.
1. See: Use PWAs in Microsoft Edge. I happened to test this on Linux Mint and Windows, but it also allegedly works on macOS, Android, and iOS.
2. The deks are borrowed from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” The title, also obviously borrowed, means “not graven,” which is to say, not deeply impressed or firmly fixed. Because a PWA is not installed onto a device in the way a native application is, it is thus—figuratively speaking, ungraven. (Also, I had to find something to rhyme with “raven;” and, while Microsoft Teams is certainly craven, I thought the other word worked a bit better. Furthermore, now you [singular] have learned at least three words, excepting the several of you [plural] who know almost all the words.)
3. This is an affiliate link, which gives you a discount of 10% off your first year of service; The Kermudgeon will receive $10 as a referral fee. If you wish to sign up for Fastmail without using our affiliate link, you may do so here.