#RaspberryPi – Microsoft Teams in RPi 4? Mmm, not yet, but it’s an interesting learning journey to start the New Year 2020

Hi!

A couple of weeks ago, Microsoft released a preview version of Microsoft Teams for Linux (see references). Since that day, I was hoping to have a chance to play around with this version, mostly in a Raspberry Pi.

Those days I also had this conversation with my best half (who is a very smart person):

Why do you need to do this? You already have a very powerful MacBook, an amazing Dell laptop and a gaming PC. So, why do you need to install Microsoft Teams in a not so powerful device at home?
Because …

There is no logic answer for this, however I learned a lot in the process. Let me share, because it all start with the official download page for Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft Teams Versions

Besides the official download page for Microsoft Teams, there is an interesting page which describes all the possible client scenarios for Desktop, Web, and Mobile. And for Desktop it includes, Windows, Linux and Mac: Get clients for Microsoft Teams (see references).

In the Linux section, we have the option to review the packages DEB and RPM repositories

DEB https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/ms-teams stable main
RPM https://packages.microsoft.com/yumrepos/ms-teams

This is also interesting, because browsing the repositories, you may find the Release and the Insiders versions.

Microsoft package repository with release and insider version of MS Teams

Raspberry Pi 4 64-bits kernel

The Raspberry Pi 4 has a 64 bits kernel, however the current Raspbian distro are not using the 64-bit kernel capabilities of the device. There is an entry on the RaspberryPi forums which explains how to enable the 64-bit kernel: Pi4 64-bit Raspbian kernel for testing – Focus on Pi4 (see references)

Add to config.txt

arm_64bit=1

and Run

sudo rpi-update

And done, in a NON OFFICIAL or NON SUPPORTED way, my device is running on X64.

This process took some time, at least 10 minutes.

Note: I’m 99% sure that this is not supported. So, all of this is mostly a testing and learning experience.

Add AMD64 architecture to Raspberry Pi.

Back to Microsoft Teams. After checking the available versions, I realized that AMD64 is the only supported architecture in Linux. The Raspberry Pi uses an ARM CPU, which uses the ARM instruction set. That is a different instruction set than that used by i386 and x86-64/amd64. So, there is no way to install an AMD64 package on a Raspberry Pi 4

However, I found an interesting command: dpkg –add-architecture

And I started to read about the command (some links in references).

dpkg –add-architecture is meant for CPUs that support multiple instruction sets. I think it was mainly introduced for x86-64 (i.e. 64bit) CPUs, which also support i386 (i.e. 32bit) instructions. This allows you to install packages compiled for i386 on a system that otherwise uses x86-64 packages.

So, even if it won’t work, I tried to add AMD64 in my RPi 4 with the following command:

#sudo dpkg --add-architecture {architecture name} && sudo apt-get update
sudo dpkg --add-architecture amd64 && sudo apt-get update

So, after this, I have the AMD64 architecture instructions installed. They are not going to work, but I can install an AMD64 package now.

Installing Teams

If you are running your Raspberry Pi with a desktop interface, just double clicking on the file: teams_1.2.00.32451_amd64.deb. This will start the installation. And, of course, it will fail!

raspberry pi 4 install microsoft teams.png

So, it was time to read and learn, and I found an alternative and amazing tool to install DEB files: GDebi (see references)

Gdebi is a tiny little app that helps you install deb files more effectively by handling dependencies. Learn how to use Gdebi and make it the default application for installing deb packages.

It’s very easy to install, just 2 commands

sudo apt-get install gdebi-core
sudo apt-get install gdebi

Note: It should work with the 2^nd command, however, I needed to add the core option 1^st.

Now I got GDebi, and I can open the package with the tool, and I got a dependency problem with the libasound2 library.

raspberry pi 4 gdebi error on dependencies libasound2

Even so, I can start the installation with the command

sudo gdebi teams_1.2.00.32451_amd64.deb

and, the app won’t work, but I’ll see the shortcut access in the [Sound & Video] folder

Again, the app won’t launch, but in the personal side, I spend some good time here learning a lot about Linux, processor architectures and more. So, I’m 100% cool now!

Happy coding and Happy New Year!

Greetings @ Burlington

El Bruno

References

Microsoft Teams, Get clients for Microsoft Teams https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/get-clients
Microsoft Teams, Downloads https://teams.microsoft.com/downloads
Microsoft Teams available on Linux, and this is the right way to install it https://elbruno.com/2019/12/11/raspberrypi-microsoft-teams-available-on-linux-and-this-is-the-right-way-to-install-it/
Pi4 64-bit raspbian kernel for testing – Focus on Pi4 https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=250730
StackOverflow, Installing amd_64 or i386 packages on raspbian (arm hf) https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24316854/installing-amd-64-or-i386-packages-on-raspbian-arm-hf
GDebi, https://launchpad.net/gdebi
Use GDebi for Quickly Installing DEB Packages in Ubuntu https://itsfoss.com/gdebi-default-ubuntu-software-center/

My Posts

My posts on Raspberry Pi ⚡🐲⚡

Dev posts for Raspberry Pi

Tools and Apps for Raspberry Pi

Setup the device

Hardware

1 comment

Patrick says:

2 Jul 2020 at 4:40 am

This is a great post, keep going investing in this, as in my head the idea of a microsoft teams room device using a raspberry pi is strolling around for quite a bit time now.

LikeLike