Powershell on Linux

Did you know Powershell is available for Linux too? Sometimes you need the Windows Powershell features available on your Linux machine, e.g. for M365, Exchange Online or Azure AD administration. Powershell can be easily installed but not all features are available.

Linux derivates officially supported for Powershell 7.1:

• Ubuntu 16.04/18.04/20.04
• Ubuntu 19.10 (via snap-packages)
• Debian 9/10
• CentOS/RHEL 7/8
• Fedora 30
• Alpine (from 3.11)

Installation example (Ubuntu 20.04)

You can directly install Powershell via repository:

# Update the list of packages
sudo apt-get update
# Install pre-requisite packages.
sudo apt-get install -y wget apt-transport-https software-properties-common
# Download the Microsoft repository GPG keys
wget -q https://packages.microsoft.com/config/ubuntu/20.04/packages-microsoft-prod.deb
# Register the Microsoft repository GPG keys
sudo dpkg -i packages-microsoft-prod.deb
# Update the list of products
sudo apt-get update
# Enable the "universe" repositories
sudo add-apt-repository universe
# Install PowerShell
sudo apt-get install -y powershell
# Start PowerShell
pwsh

Connect to Office 365 Powershell

After Powershell has been installed, it’s very easy to connect to Office 365. Open the Powershell terminal and type the following (First step will ask for O365 admin credentials)

$O365Credential = Get-Credential

$Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://outlook.office365.com/powershell-liveid/ -Credential $O365Credential -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection

Import-PSSession -Session $Session

The last step takes a few seconds until the Office 365 session has been imported. Afterwards you can run the available Powershell cmdlets.