30 ms·

Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-agent (2016)

1423 points by wielebny 10y ago

glogla 10y ago
I have to admit, the whole exchange is pretty funny: > Hello, Onedrive for Business open is very slow on Linux (Chrome/Firefox) but with very fast with a "Windows" user-agent. > Hi DL, As Office 365 for Business services(e.g. SharePoint Online, including OneDrive for Business, Exchange Online) are not supported on Linux as shown below, for the best experience, we recommend the operating system listed in the article. > Thank you, I go back to Google Apps suite. > 12 people found this helpful
- TuringTest 10y ago
  It keeps growing > 36 people found this helpful Also: > Solved my problem (12)
  - TheRealDunkirk 10y ago
    I went to vote for this, just for the fun of it, but got asked to login. Then it asked me to setup my username, and then complained that my 3 usual variants were already taken. I guess I have another account that's already sitting on that username. But who knows? Microsoft's multi-user login support is a disaster. One of my accounts is corporate, and my browsers -- ALL of them on ALL OS's -- are constantly confused. Sometimes when I need to switch, it looks like my browser flips through about 4 or 5 pages, and then makes me manually refresh to get a prompt. How can this be so bad, at this point? Google had multi-user support sorted years ago, including business account logins. I guess it's a problem due to a difference between AD-backed corporate accounts and (I assume) non-AD accounts?
    - dfcowell 10y ago
      I've lost track of the number of times I've been stuck in a login/redirect loop with Google's multiple account handling when I want to use one of their services from one of my secondary accounts. Only way out of it is to clear cookies and log in again with the account I want, then add the other 4-5 accounts until the problem happens again.
  - TylerE 10y ago
    Because linux users would NEVER, EVER brigade a poll, right?
- mcnaughtonrules 10y ago
  Absolutely hilarious >I go back to Google Apps suite.
- Keverw 10y ago
  I found that interesting too. I'm not familiar with office 365, but isn't it web based? So why does it matter what browser or OS you use?
  - hashkb 10y ago
    Just MS up to its old (classic) tricks.
    - pjmlp 10y ago
      Doesn't Hangouts only work properly on Chrome?
      - dekhn 10y ago
        There is a plugin for IE and safari. Some versions of Firefox work. The important issue is that chrome and Firefox are browsers that work on the big three platforms.
      - daenney 10y ago
        It works fine in every browser, but you might need to download a small plugin if you're not on Chrome due to WebRTC being a standard but not a standard. Regardless of your browser, it'll heat your system up so you can fry an egg or broil a steak.
        0x6c6f6c 10y ago
        Yeah the Hangouts website is my main gripe with it. Great service for talking with friends and family. Absolutely horrible performance on their site. Something to do with WebGL being used during background transitions would drop the performance of my graphics card into the dirt. Games running at the same time would incur a frame drop of 90% for the 5 seconds Hangouts is merely changing a PICTURE..
        tajen 10y ago
        Try https://appear.in https://appear.in . I have no affiliation, I just find the idea of not logging in awesome.
- dvfjsdhgfv 10y ago
  It may be funny, but at the same time it's great to see this kind of feedback directly from the customers to the company. If someone listens up there, sooner or later they'll realize there is more money in the subscription business than in one-time OS purchases, and they will put the money where the mouth is.
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    I'm guessing (especially when you consider that OS X is in there) that it has more to do with the support burden and small number of people using Linux as a desktop OS than trying to get people to buy Windows.
    - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
      So they make it run buggy in order to reduce the support burden??? Surely that makes for more support calls. I'd have much more respect for them if they just came clean and said "we hate linux users, if you want to use that OS don't use our products because we try our best to make them not work on linux". Look at what they did with Skype for example. At least then we'd know not to try their stuff.
      - skybrian 10y ago
        Almost always, nobody has any intention to "make it run buggy." It's about making it run well on platforms you care about (and officially support), and ignoring the others. Complicated software is usually fragile enough that it will have similar results.
        jacquesm 10y ago
        If a user agent change makes the software slower for a platform then that's not exactly an accident so somebody must have had the intention to make it run buggy. This has nothing to do with 'making it run well on platforms you care about' but it is 'making it run bad on platforms you don't care about'. It takes more code for the software to act in this way (this is what proves this is intentional and not accidental), and more support to boot.
- Symbiote 10y ago
  My manager and I rejected OneDrive when we were comparing different services, because it was slow and unresponsive. I didn't think to try it on Windows, so we chose a competitor. Linux users are a small minority, but I suspect they have well above average influence in what IT services are purchased.
  - kristianp 10y ago
    "Linux users are a small minority, but I suspect they have well above average influence in what IT services are purchased." Not really. If you're deciding on a vendor for a bunch of Windows users, you would test it on windows.
    - flukus 10y ago
      They were deciding on a vendor for a bunch of browser users, not windows users.
    - vetinari 10y ago
      Usually the best test for a vendor claim, that their solution is HTML/standards based and works "everywhere" is to test it on some minority platform. When you find bugs, you can always use them in negotiation.
  - Qwertious 10y ago
    >Linux users are a small minority, but I suspect they have well above average influence in what IT services are purchased. According to the stack exchange official stats that were on the frontpage yesterday, over 30% of developers run Linux Desktop. That's not "a small minority" by any means.
    - Symbiote 10y ago
      That's my point. It is a small minority of users of OneDrive, but a bigger fraction of people like systems administrators, IT department managers and so on, who decide what to buy.
- lobster_johnson 10y ago
  His thank you seems to be in reply to a deleted message by Felix Tao from Microsoft where he closed the issue prematurely. It makes more sense then.
  - Nition 10y ago
    No, the original message from Felix Tao was just a response saying OneDrive is not supported on Linux. After the post blew up on Hacker News, real Microsoft PR swept in and deleted that post, replacing that non-answer with the current one that says they've fixed it. Here's an archived version: https://archive.is/zlXWy https://archive.is/zlXWy
- rasengan0 10y ago
  That was funny but sadly many of us are stuck in MS shops. I even got folks to vote on community features/issues so basic with other cloud providers. This is a more realistic timeline, note the 2015 - 2017 duration: https://onedrive.uservoice.com/forums/262982-onedrive/suggestions/9255150-multiple-file-download-onedrive-for-business https://onedrive.uservoice.com/forums/262982-onedrive/sugges... I think the lesson is get the issue up in HN for a company to start noticing.
  - bostand 10y ago
    A university I know just switched from Google to Microsoft exchange and sharepoint. Many angry employees (many on Linux) are now using their private Gmail accounts since the Microsoft web interfaces are very slow and buggy.
  - Nition 10y ago
    Don't worry, if you leave MS you can still experience the same sort of thing from other providers. e.g. https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox/Stop-auto-inheriting-new-folders-when-using-selective-sync/idi-p/4630/page/16 https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox/Stop-auto-inheriting...
mhluongo 10y ago
They can't be throttling based on user-agent... right? I thought this was the New Microsoft. Any other hypotheses?
- dsr_ 10y ago
  It's not throttling based on user-agent. It's just a bug that happens when the user-agent parser falls off a cliff when it exhausts the values that it knows about. A bug that Microsoft won't fix, because Linux is not supported. </charitable>
  - ainiriand 10y ago
    But user-agent parsing should be blazing fast, a one-liner regexp or similar, isn't it?
    - Eldt 10y ago
      That was sarcasm
      - mijoharas 10y ago
        I don't think so, I think the person was utilising Hanlons razor[0]: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        marcosdumay 10y ago
        Gotta create a good name for the "never attribute to stupidity something that makes the perpetrator rich" maxim.
      - dsr_ 10y ago
        Yes, I intended it as sarcasm.
celticninja 10y ago
MS giveth and MS taketh away.
- ourmandave 10y ago
  MS giveth and I'd wish they'd take it away. I can't turn Onedrive off because I'm on Windows 10 Home edition (thanks to the forced upgrade from Win 7). I don't use it but everytime I access a share on my linux box, it pops up and want to be configured.
  - johnmarcus 10y ago
    https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Turn-off-or-uninstall-OneDrive-f32a17ce-3336-40fe-9c38-6efb09f944b0 https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Turn-off-or-uninsta...
  - nthcolumn 10y ago
    Pretty sure you can fix that with fdisk
morinted 10y ago
Unhelpful catch-all responses that don't display a shred of effort or care are the bane of my customer support experiences. Nothing hurts my opinion of a company like being brushed off like a bug.
- davesque 10y ago
  Yes, this. It just makes it seem like they're hoping you'll give up and go away.
- Arzh 10y ago
  That's because it is not a bug, it is what they want, for whatever reason...
- TillE 10y ago
  "Not supported" is an acceptable first half of a response, but all you really have to add is "I'll pass this on to the tech team" and the tone changes entirely.
  - 0942v8653 10y ago
    But if it's not supported, they can't pass it on to the tech team; that would be against policy. Changing policy to make companies support unsupported software is a hard sell.
    - ethbro 10y ago
      This seems like a valid bug per the Reddit thread [1]. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/60nj67/office_365_onedrive_looks_at_useragent_to/df7wnk1/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/60nj67/office_365_on...
    - nathantotten 10y ago
      That doesn't sound right at all. It's been a number of years since I have been at MS, but any engineering team I worked on would have wanted this feedback and fixed the problem. Not supported officially doesn't mean a dev can't spend an hour on a likely simple fix to help a customer - depending on who saw this feedback there are certainly many devs at MS who would fix this without even being asked. I'm willing to bet that's happening right now and this will be resolved in a few days.
davesque 10y ago
I'm trying to give the benefit of the doubt in my mind here but this is a tough one to explain away.
- adrianpike 10y ago
  Maybe they're injecting a brazillion polyfills if it's not a known user-agent?
  - madmulita 10y ago
    Yet, it works as expected without the polyfills.
    - DoctorOW 10y ago
      Right. But he's suggesting that if they don't recognize the browser that they inject as much polyfills as they can so everything works no matter what.
  - popey456963 10y ago
    100MB? Assuming they're using GZIP, that's normally a 10% compression ratio, leading to about 1GB of actual data. Let's assume this data is stored as 8 bits, that's about one hundred million characters of code! Maybe what they're doing is downloading the entirety of Windows XP (roughly a gig in size), running it in JavaScript and then rendering the page in Internet Explorer within their version of XP.
- skylan_q 10y ago
  the benefit of the doubt Normal corps generally don't deserve this, nevermind MS.
- polotics 10y ago
  Stopped giving Microsoft the benefit of the doubt in 1999, never regreted it.
  - 10y ago
anonymous_iam 10y ago
This is not a new thing. Decades ago when Verizon contracted with Microsoft to "upgrade" their web portal, it was no longer usable from any browser other than IE. I had been using it from Netscape on various SPARC machines and from my mobile device (PalmOS). The web page html source had no exotic platform specific language elements. It was obviously a "business decision". I wrote the VP at Verizon a letter pointing out that they had just abandoned 5% of their user base. I also switched to AT&T.
- mtgx 10y ago
  Behold the "new" Microsoft, same as the old Microsoft.
  - cookiecaper 10y ago
    Microsoft's cash cow has always been Windows, and secondarily, Office. That directed their decisions then and it directs their decisions now. The landscape may change such that Microsoft feels it is beneficial to release things like .NET Core as open-source, but this doesn't reflect a change in what Microsoft values ("A PC on every desk running Microsoft software" and the associated revenue streams), it reflects a change in what they believe is necessary to secure their goals.
    - sqeaky 10y ago
      Saying "its a business decision" doesn't justify unethical and potentially illegal behavior. This is either incompetence or malice. If it is malice it falls well on the wrong side antitrust behavior. If its incompetence, well it isn't much better is it?
      - cookiecaper 10y ago
        Although I don't think it's unethical to intentionally make the experience slower for some users, I'm not trying to justify it. I'm trying to explain that as long as Microsoft's incentives align with making Windows dominant, they're going to engage in behaviors to make it happen, including things like artificially slowing connections from non-Windows machines. Instead of saying "MS is releasing stuff open-source, they must be having a change of heart", we should say "MS believes that opening this as open-source is the best way to ensure Windows' continued dominance". That's what I'm trying to highlight.
tomc1985 10y ago
I've noticed this too but never investigated.... seriously M$, what the F?
jjordan 10y ago
Looks like there are still some Ballmer-era holdovers on the OneDrive team.
Dangeranger 10y ago
Considering that there are places in the world where government employees must use Linux due to regulations, and Microsoft is moving ever closer to cloud delivered services, one would think that they want to support Linux as an OS. [0] [0] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/03/french-police-saves-millions-of-euros-by-adopting-ubuntu/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/03/frenc...
- ruleabidinguser 10y ago
  Maybe it's just expensive to support
  - mintplant 10y ago
    It's running in a web browser. The OS doesn't make much of a difference.
    - kevingadd 10y ago
      Patent-encumbered media codecs are available in most Windows and Mac browsers thanks to the OS shipping codecs. On Linux? On Windows you have a battle-tested Direct3D 9/11 backend for WebGL (ANGLE) used by Chrome and Firefox, while on other platforms you're subject to the whims of the GL implementation (and on Linux there are multiple drivers to choose from in some cases). Direct3D graphics are also thread-safe in a way that is not consistently true for OpenGL (just ask a driver developer) which means that certain operations could block the UI thread (or in the case of Chrome, GPU process) that can be performed asynchronously on Windows, resulting in a difference in application behavior. On Windows there is one common software audio stack (they dropped hardware audio acceleration ages ago because it was a compatibility nightmare). On Linux in some circumstances there are multiple audio stacks which can produce differences in user experience and behavior. Recently Firefox has switched over to pulseaudio, which has caused some grief. Windows and Mac and Linux all have different networking stacks that can result in behavioral differences between OSes if you're using WebSockets or WebRTC. The GamePad API is also subject to OS differences depending on whether your gamepad has drivers and which underlying system API the browser uses. This even varies between browsers on the same machine.
spullara 10y ago
Could it be a very simplistic anti~bot system?
binglybob 10y ago
from the early 90s Microsoft: "The job isn't done until Lotus won't run"
excalibur 10y ago
The business that Microsoft alienated in this exchange probably comprised around 3% of the people who were using OneDrive on purpose.
- oculusthrift 10y ago
  more like .3
  - to3m 10y ago
    What are you talking about? Next year is the year of Linux on the desktop, and here's Microsoft barely even ready.
rory096 10y ago
This was reported on /r/linux yesterday: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/60nj67/office_365_onedrive_looks_at_useragent_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/60nj67/office_365_on... This user did some experimentation with user agents to narrow down the bug: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/60nj67/office_365_onedrive_looks_at_useragent_to/df7wnk1/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/60nj67/office_365_on...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
PleaseHelpMe 10y ago
> Thank you I go back to Google Apps suite. That reply is gold!
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jklinger410 10y ago
Onedrive is an embarrassingly subpar product for Msoft to be pushing anyway. I can't think of a single worthwhile use-case?
- NoGravitas 10y ago
  Use case: your company uses Office 365, and you want your cloud storage to be integrated with the rest of the Office 365 apps, and you don't otherwise care about the quality of the cloud storage app.
  - lmickh 10y ago
    Would add that MS is the new IBM when it comes to the old saying "No one ever got fired for buying IBM". Cost and performance simply don't matter in many folks business decision methods when something is compared to a MS product.
  - jklinger410 10y ago
    I'm going to basically cede my point to you because, honestly, Office 365 is not a bad product and even though I would not personally use it, I have to admit that this is a valid use-case, haha. I do have to point out your note about "not otherwise caring about the quality of the cloud storage app" which is more towards my point.
veli_joza 10y ago
Funny, I'm changing the user-agent to access web version of Skype from Android Firefox. It's also "not supported" but it works fine for occasionally checking the chat.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
AdmiralAsshat 10y ago
FWIW, I see this kind of thing regularly because I have the RandomAgentSpoofer extension installed on Firefox. Sometimes the page will look at the UserAgent and think it can't run X or Y so I will get an HTML-only version. It's actually kinda interesting to see what the website does when it thinks my browser can't support certain stuff (which it can...I just like to avoid fingerprinting).
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
erikj 10y ago
All hail the "new" Microsoft, still using the old anticompetitive tricks from the DOS era.
- blahblah12 10y ago
  read the analysis of the bug. it wasn't malicious or intentional.
rplnt 10y ago
Google is doing this with many of their products. And has been for many, many years. Limiting features, blocking services, etc... based solely on user agent.
- snackai 10y ago
  Any source for that claim?
  - diggan 10y ago
    Inbox when first launched was only available on Chrome and blocked other browsers via user-agent. However, if you were using Firefox and changed the user-agent to Chrome, everything worked fine.
  - ldavison 10y ago
    Try https://meet.google.com https://meet.google.com in any browser other than Chrome and you'll get a message saying your browser isn't supported. If you setup Firefox to use a newer version of Chrome user agent, the page will at least load. Seems like they are using user agent instead of feature detection to limit usage.
  - rplnt 10y ago
    Well the missing functionality comes and go, hard to keep track. One current that I know of is Google Maps (the Earth mode). Also virtually every tech demo they did over the years. One might argue that makes sense, but it really doesn't. Change user agent and it works (it's standards after all, and half the browsers on market are Chromium based anyway).
lottin 10y ago
But but I thought MS had changed and that now loves "open-source" ;)
fzaninotto 10y ago
The guy who takes one hour to build an Electron app that acts as a "windows" browser will become a celebrity.
larsnystrom 10y ago
I was managing a Google Apps account when I had a problem with Google Groups I didn't know how to solve. Picked up the phone and called the support number, and within minutes I was talking to a super nice guy who helped me out. That was the best customer support I've ever experienced. I have no affiliation with Google and I still think the original issue I had with Google Groups was due to some sloppy UI-work on their part, but that support call makes me happy just thinking about it.
- TheRealDunkirk 10y ago
  To be fair, if you've ever used paid support from Microsoft, you'd have gotten equal treatment. The couple times I had to call them back in the early 00's, I got super-technical, friendly people who got to the root of the problem right away. One even taught me to catch a Windows error via remote debugging on a different machine. I leveled up because of a support call.
shmerl 10y ago
> for the best experience, we recommend the operating system listed in the article. Yeah, what a pile of junk.
Mikeb85 10y ago
And this, along with MS' history, is why I still have a hard time using any of their technology. I appreciate some of their open source efforts, but for the most part they're still the same old. Embrace, extend, extinguish.
- jethro_tell 10y ago
  That and I use it for ten minutes and realize that myself and the designers/builders of the software live in different worlds. Why? Why? Why? Who would do it like this? fuckit back to linux
stratigos 10y ago
Still amazes me that people support Microsoft in anything in this day and age.
lol768 10y ago
Tangentially related, but Netflix also do some similar User-Agent sniffing logic for Linux users browsing with Firefox. Firefox does indeed support Widevine, but unless you pretend to be Chrome Netflix refuses to work. I got brushed off in much the same way as this user did when I tried to discuss the matter with customer support. In the end I carpet bombed a bunch of executives by guessing the email address format, and only then did I get a response from someone who knew what they were talking about and understood my complaint. I think front-line support being unhelpful like this (and furthermore being unwilling to escalate the issue to someone technically adept) is a widespread issue and I'd agree with some of the other posters here: I've encountered maybe 1 helpful post from answer.microsoft.com after numerous visits when troubleshooting Windows issues.
- 0x6c6f6c 10y ago
  You're correct that Netflix was using the user-agent to handle which browser can watch on Linux as a first check. However Netflix has updated their system to allow Firefox to stream on Linux, just so you know.
  - lol768 10y ago
    As of today, it seems! Interesting coincidence, thanks for the heads-up. Bit overdue in my opinion, but better late than never.
cvrajeesh 10y ago
my 1$ hypothesis - partner company to which Onedrive UI project outsourced didn't had any Linux machine and all developers/QA working for this partner company were Windows users, to improve compatibility matrix they had kept few Mac machines in the office to run tests. Moreover this team might not received proper spec about the backend API at the initial stages of the project development, would have receive only at last stage of the development. So they try to get it working only in one or two platforms to make the release happen :)
- solomatov 10y ago
  I am pretty sure that they don't outsource development of such important functionality.
  - toqueteos 10y ago
    You'd be surprised of what things management chooses to outsource and later on insources because it's a steaming pile of shit.
simion314 10y ago
And we hear all the time that the browser is the new OS, and that web apps are the only cross platform way to do software. I am wondering why is MS spending for the new Skype for Linux web app but not for One Drive, it would make more sense to be consistent on what platforms the web apps made by MS are supported. Now it looks like we support Skype on Linux(as alpha for now) but not One Drive(I do not know what other business apps they have)
diebir 10y ago
What's "onedrive"?
partycoder 10y ago
Microsoft in 2000: "Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches" Microsoft in 2017: "Microsoft <3 Linux! It's totally not cancer, hehe. Please buy our products, we won't monopolize anymore we promise"
robert_foss 10y ago
Microsoft up to Microsoft antics again, eh? Their open source friendliness only goes so far.
daveloyall 10y ago
Remember when I said "mark my words, MS hasn't changed!"? Side note: in this thread, users who mention events of decades past (ie, they are experienced) tend to be more critical of MS.
- blahblah12 10y ago
  glad you didn't actually read the analysis of the bug
rsweeney21 10y ago
"Don't assume bad intentions over neglect and misunderstanding." - Hanlon's razor I worked as a Microsoft employee on the xbox.com website from 2007-2010. We didn't officially support any browsers on Linux because it represented <1% of our user base. It just didn't make business sense. We tested it on occasion anyway because we are decent people and, being part of the tech community, we were fans of Linux. We supplied a list of officially supported browsers to the customer support team. Any bugs on non-supported browsers would never get reported back to our team, so we'd never hear about them. The support team did their job. This is how pretty much every company in the history of ever works.
- ng12 10y ago
  Sure, but Microsoft also spent a decade developing a different dialect of JavaScript to force vendor lock-in. You can't discredit malice either.
  - DaiPlusPlus 10y ago
    That just isn't true (and I worked on Chakra while at Microsoft). I think you're thinking of J++ (Microsoft's version of Java, not JavaScript). Now JScript (Microsoft's version of ECMAScript) does have some minor differences in the dialect, but that was only because the ECMA standard was at a standstill back then. Mozilla had no problems extending their implementation to match either.
    - fdupoo 10y ago
      Why does ms have it's own version of all these languages?
      - DaiPlusPlus 10y ago
        They're just extensions in the same way that GCC has its own extensions for C and C++. J++ was created to counter shortcomings in the design of early Java language versions that Sun was not keen to re-integrate back into the Java language. That itself isn't bad (as other JVM-compatible languages exist, like Scala and Groovy) except that J++ then needed Microsoft's own Java VM with its own platform-specific runtime extensions - and that's what the Sun lawsuit was about. I agree it was badly handled by Microsoft, and in the end Microsoft just ditched Java and reinvented J++ as C# and the .NET Framework - which is where we are today. As for JScript: before JavaScript was standardised there were extensions being added by everyone (Netscape had their own, as did Microsoft). I think Microsoft extended JScript in a very conservative way: the main change is the addition of the `new ActiveXObject` wrapper for COM objects which made AJAX possible, and also made JScript useful for automating Windows (and server-side JavaScript with ASP/JScript predates Node.js by 13 years!) - to my knowledge JScript itself didn't add any syntactical changes and provided you didn't use ActiveXObject your code would run without issue in other JavaScript engines. Note that this isn't the same thing as DOM extensions in Internet Explorer, of which there were many. I think it's worth pointing out that when IE6 was released in 2001 it was by-far, the most W3C-compliant web-browser in existence: for CSS2.1, Netscape's then compliance level was abyssal, and even beating out Opera at the time too.
ocschwar 10y ago
Yay, it's the 90's again!
voidlogic 10y ago
UserAgent switchers are a godsend. Have your Chrome or Firefox on Linux always send the Windows UA. I even have a system on work that required Chrome (by UA), but only actually works on Firefox... :'(
blahblah12 10y ago
Seriously lower your pitchforks. This was a bug and a mistake.
cpg 10y ago
Microsoft did the same thing way back with CPUID .. when it was Intel, it worked well. Otherwise (AMD, Transmeta), they would use very inefficient operations instead of SSE (IIRC), slowing down benchmarks that used media (like players, etc) and Photoshop. This is from a distant life in the past, but I think it was not limited to use of SSE.
- 21 10y ago
  Are you sure you're talking about Microsoft, and not about Intel's C++ compiler?
blahblah12 10y ago
"This is certainly a bug. It is not a targeted attacked against Linux users. Report it to Microsoft. Microsoft is just doing really shitty feature detection using User Agent strings instead of, well actual feature detection. I was able to reproduce the same result by setting my User Agent to Firefox 52 on Windows 98. If I set it to a "more realistic" user agent like IE 7 on Windows XP, it would actually redirect me to a busted page to upgrade my browser instead of Word Online. It appears if Microsoft cannot figure out your User Agent (including your OS as part of it), it gives you a busted experience."
faragon 10y ago
Any official explanation from the "New Microsoft"?
DrBoyfriend 10y ago
I can't stand how awful the UI is on Mac compared to Windows. Why have the sections and the page list waste a ton of space on the left and why can't I collapse sub-sections?
StreamBright 10y ago
It is a feature, not a bug. :)
countryqt30 10y ago
This is standard Microsoft practice. Working here for more than 10 years.
askvictor 10y ago
Has anyone tested this on a Chromebook (being Linux based)? I get that they might overlook Linux desktop due to market share, but the edu sector uses Chromebooks heavily, and this would be shooting themselves in the foot to degrade (intentionally or unintentionally) the 'first experience' a person might have with ms products.
markoutso 10y ago
I'm a person that wanted to give them another chance and got my self a Lumia 930. They didn't deserve it. Sometimes I get the feeling they are incompetent.
vorticalbox 10y ago
Has anyone tries changing their windows user agent to Linux to see if it gas the same effect? Do reply to me if you try it.
elastic_church 10y ago
yeah, but why? lots of discussions about user-agent detection and how its not a malicious attack against linux users, but no discussion how and why it is slow. is it protecting users from something further in the UX? is it stuck in an infinite loop trying to download silverlight? are they actually redirecting users to a staging server on the cheapest Azure instance?
fetbaffe 10y ago
So basically just one bug and community goes bananas on conspiracy theories. What is most plausible? Microsoft does vast majority of user testing on Microsoft Windows or that they added sleep() for Linux? Do you know any software developer that works like that?
examancer 10y ago
Apparently someone took notice. A few minutes ago a reply was added by a Microsoft employee stating a fix has been deployed. Wish they would have provided more details, but glad they finally listened after. Only took 4 months.
userbinator 10y ago
Isn't Onedrive just Microsoft's cloud storage service? I haven't used it before, but is this implying that a web file manager is slow? Feature detection or not, regardless of OS, I think an application of this nature just shouldn't be slow at all on any computer 5 years old or less.
viliam_jobko 10y ago
The previous answer by Microsoft was already edited. Here's the original: http://web.archive.org/web/20170322092445/https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_onedrivefb-mso_o365brs/onedrive-for-business-open-is-very-slow-on-linux/3d33dc1b-3cc3-4c24-9998-9ab96bad31fc http://web.archive.org/web/20170322092445/https://answers.mi...
can-onedrive 10y ago
Hi everyone, this is Can from the OneDrive team. We know that some users may have experienced difficulty accessing OneDrive for Business on Linux. The issue was resolved as of Tuesday, March 22nd 3pm PST. We identified that StaticLoad.aspx, a page that prefetches resources in the background for Office O nline apps was using the link prefetching browser mechanism only for certain platforms (iOS, Chrome OS, Mac, Windows), but for Linux it was falling back to a less efficient technique that was causing the issue. Rest assured that this was not intentional. It was an oversight. The prefetching optimization was disabled, and it will be enabled again soon after an update for StaticLoad.aspx has been tested and released on Linux. We apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused.
ebang4 10y ago
Hi everyone, this is Edgar from the OneDrive team. We know that some users may have experienced difficulty accessing OneDrive for Business on Linux. The issue was resolved as of Tue, March 22nd 3pm PST. We identified that StaticLoad.aspx, a page that prefetches resources in the background for Office online apps was using the link prefetching browser mechanism only for certain platforms (iOS, Chrome OS, Mac, Windows), but for Linux it was falling back to a less efficient technique that was causing the issue. Rest assured that this was not intentional. It was an oversight. The prefetching optimization was disabled, and it will be enabled again soon after an update for StaticLoad.aspx has been tested on Linux and released. We apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused.
- iliketosleep 10y ago
  Kudos for fixing the issue. I do question whether it was originally tested throughly on Linux in the first place, otherwise it's hard to see how such a major bug could have crept in.
  - annnnd 10y ago
    This! As a Linux user I don't really care if someone is neglecting my platform of choice or purposefully sabotaging it, I'll just move on in any case. Not performing testing on Linux is inexcusable in my book in this day and age. It seems like a bad idea to check for capabilities by parsing user agent string anyway - I though we all figured that out about 20 years ago? JavaScript allows web page to check for capabilities on-the-fly, so there really is no excuse for whitelists.
    - Karlozkiller 10y ago
      And if they would have a pure JavaScript solution people who block JavaScript would start complaining instead no? Of course you could have JavaScript as a primary solution and then fall back on the other options. Anyone can make a mistake, the real test is whether they change their ways to be less error prone. (With proper testing of Linux platforms too)
    - 10y ago
zycamanaic 10y ago
DOS Ain't Done 'til Lotus Won't Run. Don't tell me it's a myth, same thing happened with DR-DOS as well.
known 10y ago
Identified on 16th November 2016 and fix on ?
joe563323 10y ago
The next step for the microsoft is to move the entire domain of this question https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_onedrivefb-mso_o365brs/onedrive-for-business-open-is-very-slow-on-linux/3d33dc1b-3cc3-4c24-9998-9ab96bad31fc https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_... to migrate to some other url to coverup from the search links and the future damage.
yAnonymous 10y ago
With Microsoft Exchange, you get the simplified web interface on Linux, even though the browsers support everything required for the regular one. Change the user agent and it works the same as on Windows...
pacoverdi 10y ago
I don't know the intersection between SharePoint and OneDrive but when I use browse documents on SharePoint using linux/chrome my browser gets stuck eating 100% of a CPU while I don't have the same problem with linux/firefox or win10/chrome ...
EJTH 10y ago
With the state of microsoft in mind, I wouldn't be the least surprised if this was done on purpose.
StanAngeloff 10y ago
It's not just Onedrive, it's the entire Office 365, e.g., https://office.live.com/start/Word.aspx https://office.live.com/start/Word.aspx crashes Chrome (renders it unresponsive, closing the tab then takes forever). Tested Thu, 23 Mar 2017 12:11:09 +0000
jernfrost 10y ago
Hahaha silly me starting to think Microsoft after all these years had changed. Reminds me of how the crushed Lotus 1-2-3 by making their software run deliberately crappy on Windows and how they made sure all the competitors RTF products was always behind the Windows variant by releasing the updated specs to everybody only once they themselves had made a finished version. And who forgets their dirty tactics against Netscape?
bythckr 10y ago
I was starting to think that Microsoft MIGHT change. Good to know it's still the same old fox...
NinetyMPH 10y ago
This explains why it takes forever to transfer files from my phone to my desktop on the same network. It's been so slow.

1423 points by wielebny 10y ago

I have to admit, the whole exchange is pretty funny: > Hello, Onedrive for Business open is very slow on Linux (Chrome/Firefox) but with very fast with a "Windows" user-agent. > Hi DL, As Office 365 for Business services(e.g. SharePoint Online, including OneDrive for Business, Exchange Online) are not supported on Linux as shown below, for the best experience, we recommend the operating system listed in the article. > Thank you, I go back to Google Apps suite. > 12 people found this helpful

TuringTest 10y ago
It keeps growing > 36 people found this helpful Also: > Solved my problem (12)
- TheRealDunkirk 10y ago
  I went to vote for this, just for the fun of it, but got asked to login. Then it asked me to setup my username, and then complained that my 3 usual variants were already taken. I guess I have another account that's already sitting on that username. But who knows? Microsoft's multi-user login support is a disaster. One of my accounts is corporate, and my browsers -- ALL of them on ALL OS's -- are constantly confused. Sometimes when I need to switch, it looks like my browser flips through about 4 or 5 pages, and then makes me manually refresh to get a prompt. How can this be so bad, at this point? Google had multi-user support sorted years ago, including business account logins. I guess it's a problem due to a difference between AD-backed corporate accounts and (I assume) non-AD accounts?
  - dfcowell 10y ago
    I've lost track of the number of times I've been stuck in a login/redirect loop with Google's multiple account handling when I want to use one of their services from one of my secondary accounts. Only way out of it is to clear cookies and log in again with the account I want, then add the other 4-5 accounts until the problem happens again.
- TylerE 10y ago
  Because linux users would NEVER, EVER brigade a poll, right?
mcnaughtonrules 10y ago
Absolutely hilarious >I go back to Google Apps suite.
Keverw 10y ago
I found that interesting too. I'm not familiar with office 365, but isn't it web based? So why does it matter what browser or OS you use?
- hashkb 10y ago
  Just MS up to its old (classic) tricks.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    Doesn't Hangouts only work properly on Chrome?
    - dekhn 10y ago
      There is a plugin for IE and safari. Some versions of Firefox work. The important issue is that chrome and Firefox are browsers that work on the big three platforms.
    - daenney 10y ago
      It works fine in every browser, but you might need to download a small plugin if you're not on Chrome due to WebRTC being a standard but not a standard. Regardless of your browser, it'll heat your system up so you can fry an egg or broil a steak.
      - 0x6c6f6c 10y ago
        Yeah the Hangouts website is my main gripe with it. Great service for talking with friends and family. Absolutely horrible performance on their site. Something to do with WebGL being used during background transitions would drop the performance of my graphics card into the dirt. Games running at the same time would incur a frame drop of 90% for the 5 seconds Hangouts is merely changing a PICTURE..
        tajen 10y ago
        Try https://appear.in https://appear.in . I have no affiliation, I just find the idea of not logging in awesome.
dvfjsdhgfv 10y ago
It may be funny, but at the same time it's great to see this kind of feedback directly from the customers to the company. If someone listens up there, sooner or later they'll realize there is more money in the subscription business than in one-time OS purchases, and they will put the money where the mouth is.
- emodendroket 10y ago
  I'm guessing (especially when you consider that OS X is in there) that it has more to do with the support burden and small number of people using Linux as a desktop OS than trying to get people to buy Windows.
  - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
    So they make it run buggy in order to reduce the support burden??? Surely that makes for more support calls. I'd have much more respect for them if they just came clean and said "we hate linux users, if you want to use that OS don't use our products because we try our best to make them not work on linux". Look at what they did with Skype for example. At least then we'd know not to try their stuff.
    - skybrian 10y ago
      Almost always, nobody has any intention to "make it run buggy." It's about making it run well on platforms you care about (and officially support), and ignoring the others. Complicated software is usually fragile enough that it will have similar results.
      - jacquesm 10y ago
        If a user agent change makes the software slower for a platform then that's not exactly an accident so somebody must have had the intention to make it run buggy. This has nothing to do with 'making it run well on platforms you care about' but it is 'making it run bad on platforms you don't care about'. It takes more code for the software to act in this way (this is what proves this is intentional and not accidental), and more support to boot.
Symbiote 10y ago
My manager and I rejected OneDrive when we were comparing different services, because it was slow and unresponsive. I didn't think to try it on Windows, so we chose a competitor. Linux users are a small minority, but I suspect they have well above average influence in what IT services are purchased.
- kristianp 10y ago
  "Linux users are a small minority, but I suspect they have well above average influence in what IT services are purchased." Not really. If you're deciding on a vendor for a bunch of Windows users, you would test it on windows.
  - flukus 10y ago
    They were deciding on a vendor for a bunch of browser users, not windows users.
  - vetinari 10y ago
    Usually the best test for a vendor claim, that their solution is HTML/standards based and works "everywhere" is to test it on some minority platform. When you find bugs, you can always use them in negotiation.
- Qwertious 10y ago
  >Linux users are a small minority, but I suspect they have well above average influence in what IT services are purchased. According to the stack exchange official stats that were on the frontpage yesterday, over 30% of developers run Linux Desktop. That's not "a small minority" by any means.
  - Symbiote 10y ago
    That's my point. It is a small minority of users of OneDrive, but a bigger fraction of people like systems administrators, IT department managers and so on, who decide what to buy.
lobster_johnson 10y ago
His thank you seems to be in reply to a deleted message by Felix Tao from Microsoft where he closed the issue prematurely. It makes more sense then.
- Nition 10y ago
  No, the original message from Felix Tao was just a response saying OneDrive is not supported on Linux. After the post blew up on Hacker News, real Microsoft PR swept in and deleted that post, replacing that non-answer with the current one that says they've fixed it. Here's an archived version: https://archive.is/zlXWy https://archive.is/zlXWy
rasengan0 10y ago
That was funny but sadly many of us are stuck in MS shops. I even got folks to vote on community features/issues so basic with other cloud providers. This is a more realistic timeline, note the 2015 - 2017 duration: https://onedrive.uservoice.com/forums/262982-onedrive/suggestions/9255150-multiple-file-download-onedrive-for-business https://onedrive.uservoice.com/forums/262982-onedrive/sugges... I think the lesson is get the issue up in HN for a company to start noticing.
- bostand 10y ago
  A university I know just switched from Google to Microsoft exchange and sharepoint. Many angry employees (many on Linux) are now using their private Gmail accounts since the Microsoft web interfaces are very slow and buggy.
- Nition 10y ago
  Don't worry, if you leave MS you can still experience the same sort of thing from other providers. e.g. https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox/Stop-auto-inheriting-new-folders-when-using-selective-sync/idi-p/4630/page/16 https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox/Stop-auto-inheriting...

mhluongo 10y ago

They can't be throttling based on user-agent... right? I thought this was the New Microsoft. Any other hypotheses?

dsr_ 10y ago
It's not throttling based on user-agent. It's just a bug that happens when the user-agent parser falls off a cliff when it exhausts the values that it knows about. A bug that Microsoft won't fix, because Linux is not supported. </charitable>
- ainiriand 10y ago
  But user-agent parsing should be blazing fast, a one-liner regexp or similar, isn't it?
  - Eldt 10y ago
    That was sarcasm
    - mijoharas 10y ago
      I don't think so, I think the person was utilising Hanlons razor[0]: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - marcosdumay 10y ago
        Gotta create a good name for the "never attribute to stupidity something that makes the perpetrator rich" maxim.
    - dsr_ 10y ago
      Yes, I intended it as sarcasm.

celticninja 10y ago

MS giveth and MS taketh away.

ourmandave 10y ago
MS giveth and I'd wish they'd take it away. I can't turn Onedrive off because I'm on Windows 10 Home edition (thanks to the forced upgrade from Win 7). I don't use it but everytime I access a share on my linux box, it pops up and want to be configured.
- johnmarcus 10y ago
  https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Turn-off-or-uninstall-OneDrive-f32a17ce-3336-40fe-9c38-6efb09f944b0 https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Turn-off-or-uninsta...
- nthcolumn 10y ago
  Pretty sure you can fix that with fdisk

morinted 10y ago

Unhelpful catch-all responses that don't display a shred of effort or care are the bane of my customer support experiences. Nothing hurts my opinion of a company like being brushed off like a bug.

davesque 10y ago
Yes, this. It just makes it seem like they're hoping you'll give up and go away.
Arzh 10y ago
That's because it is not a bug, it is what they want, for whatever reason...
TillE 10y ago
"Not supported" is an acceptable first half of a response, but all you really have to add is "I'll pass this on to the tech team" and the tone changes entirely.
- 0942v8653 10y ago
  But if it's not supported, they can't pass it on to the tech team; that would be against policy. Changing policy to make companies support unsupported software is a hard sell.
  - ethbro 10y ago
    This seems like a valid bug per the Reddit thread [1]. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/60nj67/office_365_onedrive_looks_at_useragent_to/df7wnk1/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/60nj67/office_365_on...
  - nathantotten 10y ago
    That doesn't sound right at all. It's been a number of years since I have been at MS, but any engineering team I worked on would have wanted this feedback and fixed the problem. Not supported officially doesn't mean a dev can't spend an hour on a likely simple fix to help a customer - depending on who saw this feedback there are certainly many devs at MS who would fix this without even being asked. I'm willing to bet that's happening right now and this will be resolved in a few days.

davesque 10y ago

I'm trying to give the benefit of the doubt in my mind here but this is a tough one to explain away.

adrianpike 10y ago
Maybe they're injecting a brazillion polyfills if it's not a known user-agent?
- madmulita 10y ago
  Yet, it works as expected without the polyfills.
  - DoctorOW 10y ago
    Right. But he's suggesting that if they don't recognize the browser that they inject as much polyfills as they can so everything works no matter what.
- popey456963 10y ago
  100MB? Assuming they're using GZIP, that's normally a 10% compression ratio, leading to about 1GB of actual data. Let's assume this data is stored as 8 bits, that's about one hundred million characters of code! Maybe what they're doing is downloading the entirety of Windows XP (roughly a gig in size), running it in JavaScript and then rendering the page in Internet Explorer within their version of XP.
skylan_q 10y ago
the benefit of the doubt Normal corps generally don't deserve this, nevermind MS.
polotics 10y ago
Stopped giving Microsoft the benefit of the doubt in 1999, never regreted it.
- 10y ago

anonymous_iam 10y ago

This is not a new thing. Decades ago when Verizon contracted with Microsoft to "upgrade" their web portal, it was no longer usable from any browser other than IE. I had been using it from Netscape on various SPARC machines and from my mobile device (PalmOS). The web page html source had no exotic platform specific language elements. It was obviously a "business decision". I wrote the VP at Verizon a letter pointing out that they had just abandoned 5% of their user base. I also switched to AT&T.

mtgx 10y ago
Behold the "new" Microsoft, same as the old Microsoft.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  Microsoft's cash cow has always been Windows, and secondarily, Office. That directed their decisions then and it directs their decisions now. The landscape may change such that Microsoft feels it is beneficial to release things like .NET Core as open-source, but this doesn't reflect a change in what Microsoft values ("A PC on every desk running Microsoft software" and the associated revenue streams), it reflects a change in what they believe is necessary to secure their goals.
  - sqeaky 10y ago
    Saying "its a business decision" doesn't justify unethical and potentially illegal behavior. This is either incompetence or malice. If it is malice it falls well on the wrong side antitrust behavior. If its incompetence, well it isn't much better is it?
    - cookiecaper 10y ago
      Although I don't think it's unethical to intentionally make the experience slower for some users, I'm not trying to justify it. I'm trying to explain that as long as Microsoft's incentives align with making Windows dominant, they're going to engage in behaviors to make it happen, including things like artificially slowing connections from non-Windows machines. Instead of saying "MS is releasing stuff open-source, they must be having a change of heart", we should say "MS believes that opening this as open-source is the best way to ensure Windows' continued dominance". That's what I'm trying to highlight.

tomc1985 10y ago

I've noticed this too but never investigated.... seriously M$, what the F?

jjordan 10y ago

Looks like there are still some Ballmer-era holdovers on the OneDrive team.

Dangeranger 10y ago

Considering that there are places in the world where government employees must use Linux due to regulations, and Microsoft is moving ever closer to cloud delivered services, one would think that they want to support Linux as an OS. [0] [0] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/03/french-police-saves-millions-of-euros-by-adopting-ubuntu/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/03/frenc...

ruleabidinguser 10y ago
Maybe it's just expensive to support
- mintplant 10y ago
  It's running in a web browser. The OS doesn't make much of a difference.
  - kevingadd 10y ago
    Patent-encumbered media codecs are available in most Windows and Mac browsers thanks to the OS shipping codecs. On Linux? On Windows you have a battle-tested Direct3D 9/11 backend for WebGL (ANGLE) used by Chrome and Firefox, while on other platforms you're subject to the whims of the GL implementation (and on Linux there are multiple drivers to choose from in some cases). Direct3D graphics are also thread-safe in a way that is not consistently true for OpenGL (just ask a driver developer) which means that certain operations could block the UI thread (or in the case of Chrome, GPU process) that can be performed asynchronously on Windows, resulting in a difference in application behavior. On Windows there is one common software audio stack (they dropped hardware audio acceleration ages ago because it was a compatibility nightmare). On Linux in some circumstances there are multiple audio stacks which can produce differences in user experience and behavior. Recently Firefox has switched over to pulseaudio, which has caused some grief. Windows and Mac and Linux all have different networking stacks that can result in behavioral differences between OSes if you're using WebSockets or WebRTC. The GamePad API is also subject to OS differences depending on whether your gamepad has drivers and which underlying system API the browser uses. This even varies between browsers on the same machine.

spullara 10y ago

Could it be a very simplistic anti~bot system?

binglybob 10y ago

from the early 90s Microsoft: "The job isn't done until Lotus won't run"

excalibur 10y ago

The business that Microsoft alienated in this exchange probably comprised around 3% of the people who were using OneDrive on purpose.

oculusthrift 10y ago
more like .3
- to3m 10y ago
  What are you talking about? Next year is the year of Linux on the desktop, and here's Microsoft barely even ready.

rory096 10y ago

This was reported on /r/linux yesterday: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/60nj67/office_365_onedrive_looks_at_useragent_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/60nj67/office_365_on... This user did some experimentation with user agents to narrow down the bug: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/60nj67/office_365_onedrive_looks_at_useragent_to/df7wnk1/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/60nj67/office_365_on...

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

PleaseHelpMe 10y ago

> Thank you I go back to Google Apps suite. That reply is gold!

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

jklinger410 10y ago

Onedrive is an embarrassingly subpar product for Msoft to be pushing anyway. I can't think of a single worthwhile use-case?

NoGravitas 10y ago
Use case: your company uses Office 365, and you want your cloud storage to be integrated with the rest of the Office 365 apps, and you don't otherwise care about the quality of the cloud storage app.
- lmickh 10y ago
  Would add that MS is the new IBM when it comes to the old saying "No one ever got fired for buying IBM". Cost and performance simply don't matter in many folks business decision methods when something is compared to a MS product.
- jklinger410 10y ago
  I'm going to basically cede my point to you because, honestly, Office 365 is not a bad product and even though I would not personally use it, I have to admit that this is a valid use-case, haha. I do have to point out your note about "not otherwise caring about the quality of the cloud storage app" which is more towards my point.

veli_joza 10y ago

Funny, I'm changing the user-agent to access web version of Skype from Android Firefox. It's also "not supported" but it works fine for occasionally checking the chat.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

AdmiralAsshat 10y ago

FWIW, I see this kind of thing regularly because I have the RandomAgentSpoofer extension installed on Firefox. Sometimes the page will look at the UserAgent and think it can't run X or Y so I will get an HTML-only version. It's actually kinda interesting to see what the website does when it thinks my browser can't support certain stuff (which it can...I just like to avoid fingerprinting).

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

erikj 10y ago

All hail the "new" Microsoft, still using the old anticompetitive tricks from the DOS era.

blahblah12 10y ago
read the analysis of the bug. it wasn't malicious or intentional.

rplnt 10y ago

Google is doing this with many of their products. And has been for many, many years. Limiting features, blocking services, etc... based solely on user agent.

snackai 10y ago
Any source for that claim?
- diggan 10y ago
  Inbox when first launched was only available on Chrome and blocked other browsers via user-agent. However, if you were using Firefox and changed the user-agent to Chrome, everything worked fine.
- ldavison 10y ago
  Try https://meet.google.com https://meet.google.com in any browser other than Chrome and you'll get a message saying your browser isn't supported. If you setup Firefox to use a newer version of Chrome user agent, the page will at least load. Seems like they are using user agent instead of feature detection to limit usage.
- rplnt 10y ago
  Well the missing functionality comes and go, hard to keep track. One current that I know of is Google Maps (the Earth mode). Also virtually every tech demo they did over the years. One might argue that makes sense, but it really doesn't. Change user agent and it works (it's standards after all, and half the browsers on market are Chromium based anyway).

lottin 10y ago

But but I thought MS had changed and that now loves "open-source" ;)

fzaninotto 10y ago

The guy who takes one hour to build an Electron app that acts as a "windows" browser will become a celebrity.

larsnystrom 10y ago

I was managing a Google Apps account when I had a problem with Google Groups I didn't know how to solve. Picked up the phone and called the support number, and within minutes I was talking to a super nice guy who helped me out. That was the best customer support I've ever experienced. I have no affiliation with Google and I still think the original issue I had with Google Groups was due to some sloppy UI-work on their part, but that support call makes me happy just thinking about it.

TheRealDunkirk 10y ago
To be fair, if you've ever used paid support from Microsoft, you'd have gotten equal treatment. The couple times I had to call them back in the early 00's, I got super-technical, friendly people who got to the root of the problem right away. One even taught me to catch a Windows error via remote debugging on a different machine. I leveled up because of a support call.

shmerl 10y ago

> for the best experience, we recommend the operating system listed in the article. Yeah, what a pile of junk.

Mikeb85 10y ago

And this, along with MS' history, is why I still have a hard time using any of their technology. I appreciate some of their open source efforts, but for the most part they're still the same old. Embrace, extend, extinguish.

jethro_tell 10y ago
That and I use it for ten minutes and realize that myself and the designers/builders of the software live in different worlds. Why? Why? Why? Who would do it like this? fuckit back to linux

stratigos 10y ago

Still amazes me that people support Microsoft in anything in this day and age.

lol768 10y ago

Tangentially related, but Netflix also do some similar User-Agent sniffing logic for Linux users browsing with Firefox. Firefox does indeed support Widevine, but unless you pretend to be Chrome Netflix refuses to work. I got brushed off in much the same way as this user did when I tried to discuss the matter with customer support. In the end I carpet bombed a bunch of executives by guessing the email address format, and only then did I get a response from someone who knew what they were talking about and understood my complaint. I think front-line support being unhelpful like this (and furthermore being unwilling to escalate the issue to someone technically adept) is a widespread issue and I'd agree with some of the other posters here: I've encountered maybe 1 helpful post from answer.microsoft.com after numerous visits when troubleshooting Windows issues.

0x6c6f6c 10y ago
You're correct that Netflix was using the user-agent to handle which browser can watch on Linux as a first check. However Netflix has updated their system to allow Firefox to stream on Linux, just so you know.
- lol768 10y ago
  As of today, it seems! Interesting coincidence, thanks for the heads-up. Bit overdue in my opinion, but better late than never.

cvrajeesh 10y ago

my 1$ hypothesis - partner company to which Onedrive UI project outsourced didn't had any Linux machine and all developers/QA working for this partner company were Windows users, to improve compatibility matrix they had kept few Mac machines in the office to run tests. Moreover this team might not received proper spec about the backend API at the initial stages of the project development, would have receive only at last stage of the development. So they try to get it working only in one or two platforms to make the release happen :)

solomatov 10y ago
I am pretty sure that they don't outsource development of such important functionality.
- toqueteos 10y ago
  You'd be surprised of what things management chooses to outsource and later on insources because it's a steaming pile of shit.

simion314 10y ago

And we hear all the time that the browser is the new OS, and that web apps are the only cross platform way to do software. I am wondering why is MS spending for the new Skype for Linux web app but not for One Drive, it would make more sense to be consistent on what platforms the web apps made by MS are supported. Now it looks like we support Skype on Linux(as alpha for now) but not One Drive(I do not know what other business apps they have)

diebir 10y ago

What's "onedrive"?

partycoder 10y ago

Microsoft in 2000: "Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches" Microsoft in 2017: "Microsoft <3 Linux! It's totally not cancer, hehe. Please buy our products, we won't monopolize anymore we promise"

robert_foss 10y ago

Microsoft up to Microsoft antics again, eh? Their open source friendliness only goes so far.

daveloyall 10y ago

Remember when I said "mark my words, MS hasn't changed!"? Side note: in this thread, users who mention events of decades past (ie, they are experienced) tend to be more critical of MS.

blahblah12 10y ago
glad you didn't actually read the analysis of the bug

rsweeney21 10y ago

"Don't assume bad intentions over neglect and misunderstanding." - Hanlon's razor I worked as a Microsoft employee on the xbox.com website from 2007-2010. We didn't officially support any browsers on Linux because it represented <1% of our user base. It just didn't make business sense. We tested it on occasion anyway because we are decent people and, being part of the tech community, we were fans of Linux. We supplied a list of officially supported browsers to the customer support team. Any bugs on non-supported browsers would never get reported back to our team, so we'd never hear about them. The support team did their job. This is how pretty much every company in the history of ever works.

ng12 10y ago
Sure, but Microsoft also spent a decade developing a different dialect of JavaScript to force vendor lock-in. You can't discredit malice either.
- DaiPlusPlus 10y ago
  That just isn't true (and I worked on Chakra while at Microsoft). I think you're thinking of J++ (Microsoft's version of Java, not JavaScript). Now JScript (Microsoft's version of ECMAScript) does have some minor differences in the dialect, but that was only because the ECMA standard was at a standstill back then. Mozilla had no problems extending their implementation to match either.
  - fdupoo 10y ago
    Why does ms have it's own version of all these languages?
    - DaiPlusPlus 10y ago
      They're just extensions in the same way that GCC has its own extensions for C and C++. J++ was created to counter shortcomings in the design of early Java language versions that Sun was not keen to re-integrate back into the Java language. That itself isn't bad (as other JVM-compatible languages exist, like Scala and Groovy) except that J++ then needed Microsoft's own Java VM with its own platform-specific runtime extensions - and that's what the Sun lawsuit was about. I agree it was badly handled by Microsoft, and in the end Microsoft just ditched Java and reinvented J++ as C# and the .NET Framework - which is where we are today. As for JScript: before JavaScript was standardised there were extensions being added by everyone (Netscape had their own, as did Microsoft). I think Microsoft extended JScript in a very conservative way: the main change is the addition of the `new ActiveXObject` wrapper for COM objects which made AJAX possible, and also made JScript useful for automating Windows (and server-side JavaScript with ASP/JScript predates Node.js by 13 years!) - to my knowledge JScript itself didn't add any syntactical changes and provided you didn't use ActiveXObject your code would run without issue in other JavaScript engines. Note that this isn't the same thing as DOM extensions in Internet Explorer, of which there were many. I think it's worth pointing out that when IE6 was released in 2001 it was by-far, the most W3C-compliant web-browser in existence: for CSS2.1, Netscape's then compliance level was abyssal, and even beating out Opera at the time too.

ocschwar 10y ago

Yay, it's the 90's again!

voidlogic 10y ago

UserAgent switchers are a godsend. Have your Chrome or Firefox on Linux always send the Windows UA. I even have a system on work that required Chrome (by UA), but only actually works on Firefox... :'(

blahblah12 10y ago

Seriously lower your pitchforks. This was a bug and a mistake.

cpg 10y ago

Microsoft did the same thing way back with CPUID .. when it was Intel, it worked well. Otherwise (AMD, Transmeta), they would use very inefficient operations instead of SSE (IIRC), slowing down benchmarks that used media (like players, etc) and Photoshop. This is from a distant life in the past, but I think it was not limited to use of SSE.

21 10y ago
Are you sure you're talking about Microsoft, and not about Intel's C++ compiler?

blahblah12 10y ago

"This is certainly a bug. It is not a targeted attacked against Linux users. Report it to Microsoft. Microsoft is just doing really shitty feature detection using User Agent strings instead of, well actual feature detection. I was able to reproduce the same result by setting my User Agent to Firefox 52 on Windows 98. If I set it to a "more realistic" user agent like IE 7 on Windows XP, it would actually redirect me to a busted page to upgrade my browser instead of Word Online. It appears if Microsoft cannot figure out your User Agent (including your OS as part of it), it gives you a busted experience."

faragon 10y ago

Any official explanation from the "New Microsoft"?

DrBoyfriend 10y ago

I can't stand how awful the UI is on Mac compared to Windows. Why have the sections and the page list waste a ton of space on the left and why can't I collapse sub-sections?

StreamBright 10y ago

It is a feature, not a bug. :)

countryqt30 10y ago

This is standard Microsoft practice. Working here for more than 10 years.

askvictor 10y ago

Has anyone tested this on a Chromebook (being Linux based)? I get that they might overlook Linux desktop due to market share, but the edu sector uses Chromebooks heavily, and this would be shooting themselves in the foot to degrade (intentionally or unintentionally) the 'first experience' a person might have with ms products.

markoutso 10y ago

I'm a person that wanted to give them another chance and got my self a Lumia 930. They didn't deserve it. Sometimes I get the feeling they are incompetent.

vorticalbox 10y ago

Has anyone tries changing their windows user agent to Linux to see if it gas the same effect? Do reply to me if you try it.

elastic_church 10y ago

yeah, but why? lots of discussions about user-agent detection and how its not a malicious attack against linux users, but no discussion how and why it is slow. is it protecting users from something further in the UX? is it stuck in an infinite loop trying to download silverlight? are they actually redirecting users to a staging server on the cheapest Azure instance?

fetbaffe 10y ago

So basically just one bug and community goes bananas on conspiracy theories. What is most plausible? Microsoft does vast majority of user testing on Microsoft Windows or that they added sleep() for Linux? Do you know any software developer that works like that?

examancer 10y ago

Apparently someone took notice. A few minutes ago a reply was added by a Microsoft employee stating a fix has been deployed. Wish they would have provided more details, but glad they finally listened after. Only took 4 months.

userbinator 10y ago

Isn't Onedrive just Microsoft's cloud storage service? I haven't used it before, but is this implying that a web file manager is slow? Feature detection or not, regardless of OS, I think an application of this nature just shouldn't be slow at all on any computer 5 years old or less.

viliam_jobko 10y ago

The previous answer by Microsoft was already edited. Here's the original: http://web.archive.org/web/20170322092445/https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_onedrivefb-mso_o365brs/onedrive-for-business-open-is-very-slow-on-linux/3d33dc1b-3cc3-4c24-9998-9ab96bad31fc http://web.archive.org/web/20170322092445/https://answers.mi...

can-onedrive 10y ago

Hi everyone, this is Can from the OneDrive team. We know that some users may have experienced difficulty accessing OneDrive for Business on Linux. The issue was resolved as of Tuesday, March 22nd 3pm PST. We identified that StaticLoad.aspx, a page that prefetches resources in the background for Office O nline apps was using the link prefetching browser mechanism only for certain platforms (iOS, Chrome OS, Mac, Windows), but for Linux it was falling back to a less efficient technique that was causing the issue. Rest assured that this was not intentional. It was an oversight. The prefetching optimization was disabled, and it will be enabled again soon after an update for StaticLoad.aspx has been tested and released on Linux. We apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused.

ebang4 10y ago

Hi everyone, this is Edgar from the OneDrive team. We know that some users may have experienced difficulty accessing OneDrive for Business on Linux. The issue was resolved as of Tue, March 22nd 3pm PST. We identified that StaticLoad.aspx, a page that prefetches resources in the background for Office online apps was using the link prefetching browser mechanism only for certain platforms (iOS, Chrome OS, Mac, Windows), but for Linux it was falling back to a less efficient technique that was causing the issue. Rest assured that this was not intentional. It was an oversight. The prefetching optimization was disabled, and it will be enabled again soon after an update for StaticLoad.aspx has been tested on Linux and released. We apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused.

iliketosleep 10y ago
Kudos for fixing the issue. I do question whether it was originally tested throughly on Linux in the first place, otherwise it's hard to see how such a major bug could have crept in.
- annnnd 10y ago
  This! As a Linux user I don't really care if someone is neglecting my platform of choice or purposefully sabotaging it, I'll just move on in any case. Not performing testing on Linux is inexcusable in my book in this day and age. It seems like a bad idea to check for capabilities by parsing user agent string anyway - I though we all figured that out about 20 years ago? JavaScript allows web page to check for capabilities on-the-fly, so there really is no excuse for whitelists.
  - Karlozkiller 10y ago
    And if they would have a pure JavaScript solution people who block JavaScript would start complaining instead no? Of course you could have JavaScript as a primary solution and then fall back on the other options. Anyone can make a mistake, the real test is whether they change their ways to be less error prone. (With proper testing of Linux platforms too)
  - 10y ago

zycamanaic 10y ago

DOS Ain't Done 'til Lotus Won't Run. Don't tell me it's a myth, same thing happened with DR-DOS as well.

known 10y ago

Identified on 16th November 2016 and fix on ?

joe563323 10y ago

The next step for the microsoft is to move the entire domain of this question https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_onedrivefb-mso_o365brs/onedrive-for-business-open-is-very-slow-on-linux/3d33dc1b-3cc3-4c24-9998-9ab96bad31fc https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_... to migrate to some other url to coverup from the search links and the future damage.

yAnonymous 10y ago

With Microsoft Exchange, you get the simplified web interface on Linux, even though the browsers support everything required for the regular one. Change the user agent and it works the same as on Windows...

pacoverdi 10y ago

I don't know the intersection between SharePoint and OneDrive but when I use browse documents on SharePoint using linux/chrome my browser gets stuck eating 100% of a CPU while I don't have the same problem with linux/firefox or win10/chrome ...

EJTH 10y ago

With the state of microsoft in mind, I wouldn't be the least surprised if this was done on purpose.

StanAngeloff 10y ago

It's not just Onedrive, it's the entire Office 365, e.g., https://office.live.com/start/Word.aspx https://office.live.com/start/Word.aspx crashes Chrome (renders it unresponsive, closing the tab then takes forever). Tested Thu, 23 Mar 2017 12:11:09 +0000

jernfrost 10y ago

Hahaha silly me starting to think Microsoft after all these years had changed. Reminds me of how the crushed Lotus 1-2-3 by making their software run deliberately crappy on Windows and how they made sure all the competitors RTF products was always behind the Windows variant by releasing the updated specs to everybody only once they themselves had made a finished version. And who forgets their dirty tactics against Netscape?

bythckr 10y ago

I was starting to think that Microsoft MIGHT change. Good to know it's still the same old fox...

NinetyMPH 10y ago

This explains why it takes forever to transfer files from my phone to my desktop on the same network. It's been so slow.