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

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

#61

Post by popey456963 »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #49
simias wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really see it that way. I don't think Microsoft would be expected to offer support for an operating system that's not officially supported. I could see only two ways this could've turned out, either "we're planning to support linux in a future version, we'll keep you updated when that happens" or exactly what we got here. If this is actually a bug then I think it would be rather inappropriate for the support…

Obviously it works on Linux; the slow down is the direct result of OneDrive's User-Agent based code paths.

This.

People forget that they're _actively_ appearing to break it by using this UA detection. No company should _ever_ use user-agents for feature detection, because user agents themselves are screwy in so many ways [0]. Honestly, I feel like this was someone actively deciding to break the system on Linux (or any unrecognised UA). Wouldn't any reasonable developer just send back a fully-featured page if they couldn't understand a UA?

[0] http://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/

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

#62

Post by Sir_Substance »

EpicEng wrote: post #50
TillE wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

So... Just lie? This isn't going anywhere, the platform isn't supported. I'm pretty sure the powers that be remembered that Linux was a thing when they made that decision.

You don't have to lie. Under these circumstances, I often say to the people reporting it very directly "That's not a supported use-case, but I will make sure the relevant people know anyway".

I then go and let the person who owns that product know. Half the time, they say "that's not a supported usecase and it's a pain to change, so it's not happening". The other half of the time, they shrug and say "Put a ticket in, if I can fix it easily I will, I'll take a look when I have time".

Unsupported doesn't mean "no", it means "we're not going to invest noticeable effort into it, and it's lowest priority". Easy fixes may happen, but results are not guaranteed.

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

#63

Post by rbanffy »

tankenmate wrote: post #10
mhluongo wrote: post #2

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

I have no direct understanding but I have a hypothesis; - different generated html / js depending on user agent (UA) - bug fixes are rolled out on a UA by UA basis - bug fixes have been rolled out for Windows and Mac (supported) - but not for the "generic" HTML / JS output If this is true it will mean that anything other than the supported platforms will fall further behind as time goes by.

> depending on user agent (UA)

This would be very amateurish. The right way to do it is to check browser capabilities. User agents can be easily manipulated and are considered unreliable.

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

#64

Post by nathantotten »

0942v8653 wrote: post #36
TillE wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

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.

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.

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

#65

Post by 7952 »

simias wrote: post #37
morinted wrote: post #9

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.

I don't really see it that way. I don't think Microsoft would be expected to offer support for an operating system that's not officially supported. I could see only two ways this could've turned out, either "we're planning to support linux in a future version, we'll keep you updated when that happens" or exactly what we got here. If this is actually a bug then I think it would be rather inappropriate for the support…

Web apps are marketed as "working anywhere" you have a browser. The underlying OS should not matter, and that again is a selling point. And presumably this issue is present on mobile browsers with low market share.

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

#66

Post by simias »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #49
simias wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really see it that way. I don't think Microsoft would be expected to offer support for an operating system that's not officially supported. I could see only two ways this could've turned out, either "we're planning to support linux in a future version, we'll keep you updated when that happens" or exactly what we got here. If this is actually a bug then I think it would be rather inappropriate for the support…

Obviously it works on Linux; the slow down is the direct result of OneDrive's User-Agent based code paths.

If said code paths work correctly on the supported operating systems and browsers why does it matter? You could say that it's a poor technical decision but that's really not up to the support to address.

I guess you could reproduce the bug on a supported OS and browser by manually changing the user agent but I doubt the support would accept that either. It would be like complaining that the site becomes unusable if you disable javascript or images, they probably only support "vanilla" browsers.

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

#68

Post by plgs »

nkkollaw wrote: post #56
morinted wrote: post #9

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.

Definitely. The guy would've probably gotten fired if he was honest: "that almost looks like it was done on purpose to force people to use Windows", but he could have avoided completely dismissing the guy. For instance, by saying: "thanks for reporting this, I'll pass this to the tech team. In the meantime you can keep using your solution if it solves the problem for you". It's probably hard for a huge company to giv…

"thanks for reporting this, I'll pass this to the tech team"

It's not something they can say. The product is unsupported and the "tech team" won't care.

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

#69

Post by nathantotten »

popey456963 wrote: post #61
CodeWriter23 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously it works on Linux; the slow down is the direct result of OneDrive's User-Agent based code paths.

This. People forget that they're _actively_ appearing to break it by using this UA detection. No company should _ever_ use user-agents for feature detection, because user agents themselves are screwy in so many ways [0]. Honestly, I feel like this was someone actively deciding to break the system on Linux (or any unrecognised UA). Wouldn't any reasonable developer just send back a fully-featured page if they couldn't…

You don't know when this code was written or what the original purpose was. User agent detection used to be a best practice. Onedrive for business is a mountain of legacy software going from sharepoint to groove to who knows what. This bug could be buried in some library that was written 5+ years ago. Maliciously going out of your way to not support Linux sounds like a good way to have your code review rejected.

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

#70

Post by dv_dt »

askmike wrote: post #60
CodeWriter23 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously it works on Linux; the slow down is the direct result of OneDrive's User-Agent based code paths.

And what if some programmers are put unto fixing this, to realise the normal code path has a number of other bugs for linux? If you write web software you clearly define what you support and what you do not. I've fallen into the "I know this browser is not supported, but everything works except for X" trap. Where you first spend a month fixing other bugs that also don't work, only to end up with a more complex QA dev…

It's true, but the flip side is don't offer a web based product if you can't support a wide range of web browsers on multiple OSes. This gives me flashbacks to old (hopefuly dying) "web based" enterprise apps that were browser accessible only by a one magic version of windows explorer with a giant slew of automatically downloaded browser extensions. Just produce an app if that's all that can be supported.
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