The Teams app for Linux in December will become a WPA and will only be accessible from Chrome and Edge
Few days ago Microsoft announced that it will make some changes on your client Microsoft Teams for Linux and that this will be replaced by a progressive web app in December. With this, Microsoft announces that it will make a change from the Electron-based Linux desktop application to a new one in the form of a progressive web application.
This change leads to many complaints from users who have commented that the application is too "heavy" and to which he has listened to the comments by taking actions to improve the user experience.
With this change, Microsoft Teams will be accessible through Google and Microsoft Edge, but with Firefox, still the most popular browser on Linux, it will not allow access to the collaborative work platform, leaving this as a bad taste in the mouth for many users.
“Let us know you want the full feature richness of Microsoft Teams on Linux, like background effects, reactions, gallery viewing, and more. We've found that the best course of action is to offer a Teams Progressive Web App (PWA) on Linux as a new feature in our current web client, which we'll be rolling out to our Linux customers in the coming months. The PWA allows us to ship the latest Teams features to our Linux customers faster and helps us bridge the gaps that existed between the Teams desktop client on Linux and Windows. The PWA experience will be available in Edge and Chrome browsers on Linux.
In 90 days (early December), we will retire the Microsoft Teams desktop client on Linux, which is currently available as a public release. All users of the Microsoft Teams Linux desktop client will need to upgrade to the web or PWA version, which we will continue to invest our development resources into. We are committed to helping all existing Linux customers get started with the PWA application; we'll post a guide when we're closer to launching this feature," Microsoft said in an update via the Teams app.
In general terms, the ad is fueling the debate over the choice between Electron Framework y Progressive Web Apps (PWA) for desktop application development.
Compared to the Electron frame, a progressive web app offers the advantage of being accessible on almost any device with a PWA-enabled browser, even when an Internet connection is not available. Apps built on Electron, on the other hand, are a hybrid form of desktop apps that cannot be installed on mobile devices. This is one of the reasons progressive web apps are becoming mainstream.
Teams PWA is an evolution of our Linux web experience: it offers "the best of the web with key client capabilities" - no installation, lightweight, and has a rich feature set. For example, the PWA version supports features like:
Background blur and custom backgrounds Reactions and raising hands in meetings Large gallery and set mode PWA also offers similar app features
In fact, according to Statista, the number of smartphone users worldwide has exceeded six billion. By 2026, this number is expected to rise to more than 8 billion. Additionally, mobile phones account for 54% of global Internet traffic.
Therefore, the trend towards using progressive web apps should gain momentum in the next years. It allows websites like Google Maps to work faster and offline. This is one of the reasons why Starbucks, Uber, Twitter and other Pinterest use Web Apps.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that according to Microsoft, a blog post will be made in due course about this change and details on how to install Teams as a PWA on Edge and Chrome for Linux in due course.
And well, it is worth mentioning that there are several alternatives to Teams that we can use for Linux, which are Zoom, Slack, Apache meetings, among others, just to mention the most popular.
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