Microsoft continues to expand the reach of its Teams business collaboration tool with the launch of a public preview on Linux. This is the first time that an application from the Office suite has been officially launched on Linux.
The Linux version supports all core functionality of Teams, including chat and calling, video conferencing, and collaboration on Office 365 documents.
“Most of our customers have devices that run on different platforms, such as Windows 10, Linux and others. We are committed to supporting mixed environments in our cloud and productivity offerings,” notes Microsoft Product Marketing Manager Marissa Salazar in a blog post.
As this is a first preview, there may be things that do not work properly yet. However, Microsoft encourages its users to install the application on their Linux systems so that the company can collect feedback.
Chasing Slack
With the introduction on Linux, Microsoft is expanding its potential user base for Teams. Also major competitor Slack has been providing support for Linux for some time, and has been chased by Microsoft for some time now.
Recently, Microsoft announced that Teams has 20 million active daily users, compared to Slack’s 12 million. Slack claims that the situation looks different when you look at the actual activity of users.
More Office on Linux?
The logical question now is whether Microsoft will eventually bring other Office applications to Linux as well. The company has no say in the matter at the moment, but according to ZDNet, there have been hints of a possible introduction of OneDrive on Linux before.
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