The Corona (Corvid-19) virus has forced a lot of us to work from home. My preferred way of working, is by using openSUSE. Because my company has decided a while ago that Office365 and Microsoft Teams would be the default applications for collaboration, I am able to do so.

Installing Microsoft Teams Preview

The first thing to do is to go to the Microsoft Teams website to download the Teams software package.

Save the RPM file to your computer.

Now open the Dolphin file browser and either press F4 or click on: Control –> Panels –> Terminal.

Now install Teams by using the command:

sudo zypper install teams-versionnumber.x86_64.rpm

First enter your root password. When asked to confirm the installation, type ‘y’ and then press Enter.

After installation, type ‘Teams’ in your launcher to start the Microsoft Teams – Preview application.

You can login by entering your (work) e-mail address and your password and if needed the Two Factor Authentication approval.

My experience

Teams on Linux works very well. Video conferencing also works like a charm. It also works great with SharePoint (for accessing your Teams files), Outlook (for knowing when your next meeting starts), Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Everything works as you would expect.

The Word, Excel, PowerPoint versions are comparable with the browser versions of Office365. So the desktop apps still work a bit better. For instance when creating rich formatted Word documents or when creating visually impressive PowerPoint presentations. But I am able to do minor edits without a problem.

Conclusion

Microsoft Teams on Linux works just as well as the Windows version. And that is one of the biggest compliments that you can give to a Microsoft Office application. The only difference is that you cannot open files in the desktop versions of Word, Excel or PowerPoint. So now we wait for those to come to Linux as well!

Published on: 20 April 2020