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Comment by cloudengineer94 | Hacker News Reader

I know right? Plus MS Teams is the among the most used apps in the enterprise world how come the only good version of it is only available in Windows 11 where most workplaces aren't even pushing it to their users.

The way Microsoft handles Teams annoys the crap out of me the MacOS and Linux versions are left to die basically.

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It is (by far) the most horrific piece of software I'm forced to used, the UI/UX is confusing, it's a battery killer, eats all the ram (though - that's common with all electron garbage), it somehow manages to make Bluetooth headsets drop out, it significantly impacts network performance when sharing video, a lot of bugs in the calendaring system.... I could go on, but damn I just hate it.

When I used to have my i9 16" MBP, the thing would go crazy and hit 90% CPU usage during web calls on Teams.

I had to force myself to have it in clamshell mode to avoid crazy stuff going on.

On PC at least sometimes it helps to keep it on the laptop screen instead of an external screen.

Use it in a browser. At least you can close the browser, and to be honest desktop Chrome seems to have better power management.

Of course, sometimes you then get the "Your browser is unsupported -- please use Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome" message, whilst using Chrome...

Sadly misses important features like background blur and more on the MacOS browser..

I agree so much! It is baffling to me that so many companies/schools/individuals are actively using it. It is _so_ _bad_. Messages are lost, it reboots spontaneously, it crashes, one cannot turn off emoticons (I think (the UI doesn't help)), etc. It does not even take security seriously. What is good about that software?

And then when I talk about this with colleagues, they seem to be just fine with it...

Anyway, sorry about the rant. But it is just so nice to see that there are other people also dissatisfied with it, and that is not just me.

The reason people use it is because either they don’t have a say in it or they legitimately never used anything better (such as Slack or the lesser-known competitors like Mattermost).

If your benchmark is Skype for Business or email then I guess Teams is indeed an upgrade, and Microsoft is betting on that.

> If your benchmark is Skype for Business or email then I guess Teams is indeed an upgrade

No it really isn't! At least shouldn't be forced as a replacement for Skype.

Also because Microsoft try to lock people in by giving teams for "free" when an org buys Office 365.

Teams is the only application that consistently has trouble finding any audio devices because it decides to manage them itself, poorly, instead of relying on system defaults.

Audio works in every other application, but sometimes Teams just decides it can't find any audio interface. Or worse, it finds one but decides "It's not working" and refuses to use it.

Using Teams in the browser is then a possible solution.

Literally every time I type in ``` I get different behavior, depending on what mood it’s in. And some days it stops getting updates, especially if you’ve got the mobile version running too. Step out for a moment and someone asks you a question? Well good luck getting it to show up in a device with a real keyboard.

> the MacOS and Linux versions are left to die basically.

I hate Teams as much as the next guy, but I'm not sure what you mean by this. On Linux, I have version 1.4.00.26453, vs 1.4.00.32771 on Windows 11 (installed fresh today).

Also, the Windows experience is just as atrocious as on Linux, so for once I don't get the feeling that Linux is a second-class citizen. If anything, all citizens are last-class.

The version numbers are lying. The Linux version is missing important features, like seeing more than 4 participants at the same time, or blurring the background. Also, for some reason it is often not possible to see the camera picture of participants when they start screen sharing (if they are using the Linux version, that is).

I don't know about the number of participants, luckily I've never been in a mammoth call. As for the background blur, it may be related to a missing feature in Electron. I seem to remember that another conferencing app (might have been zoom, not sure) didn't support this while running on Chrome/Linux, so I figure it's related.

To me, the main missing feature on Linux is the "native notifications" feature (as opposed to the bespoke window that pops up).

There's a lot of missing features like those mentioned above, is the reply option with a quote already working in Linux? Been using MacOS since the MBP14" came out and haven't booted by PopOS desktop since I'm not at home

> is the reply option with a quote already working in Linux?

Yes, and it has for a while. I don't use it that often, though, so I can't comment since when it works.

As a long time Linux user and one that has suffered through multiple versions of teams/slack/zoom/Google Meet I was pleasantly surprised with Google Meet (in chromium) for video calls. It worked flawlessly, adapted really well to a super wide monitor (actually used the space well), and had the background blurring/replacement features that get stripped from most linux clients, the only downside was that it didn't like screensharing in Firefox.

This is interesting. I've actually had a very jarring experience with Google meet. My webcam image, for some reason, would be squished, like it attempted to constrain it to 4:3 when it's 16:9. But the end image wasn't 4:3, there would be vertical bands on the sides. However, while waiting in the lobby for a meeting, the preview worked fine. This happened on both Firefox and Chrome (actual Chrome, not Chromium), and with multiple people.

The exact same setup worked perfectly in Teams, Zoom and OBS.

I don't think it's a limitation with electron on Linux. One time I joined a meeting with an external org, and probably due to some bug in teams I suddenly got more features like e.g. background blur. The next meeting a couple of hours later the features were gone again.

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