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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)

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skype was messed up for ages, they actually have a really cleaned up Linux client, it's based around Electron so it actually works a lot better than the older one. Skype is an example that they do care about Linux too.

The new Skype client is crap compared to the old one. 99% of all settings are gone. Video calls are gone.

I've said this before, but the last time Skype worked reliably for me was on the Nokia n800, circa 2008. I had a subscription for several years 2012-2015ish and didn't have an acceptable quality call once.

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

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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),…

> 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 That's not necessarily true. For example they might be doing polyfills that are slower than the native windows implementation. I feel like I'm seeing a lot of this kind of thinking everywhere. The canonical example for me is lately is "he voted for Trump/Hi…

Microsoft has a history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code

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

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Almost always, nobody has any intention to "make it run buggy." Well, Microsoft has a long history of "making things buggy" everywhere else to create lock-ins. This instance may not be strictly related, but people's attitude has been shaped by years of anti-competitive stuff that MS has pulled.

They do have a reputation, but it's decades old, and things have changed quite a bit. I don't think we should base our conclusions on stale data.

Decades old. The GWX consent brouhaha is decades old? Edge (not IE) becoming the default browser all by itself is decades old? Riiiiiiiight. Decades of consistent data, methinks.

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

#314
post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft's​ behavior was illegal not because of bundling alone, but because of bundling a product (IE) in a different market with a product which was a monopoly (Windows) in what was held to be (based on additional Al evidence beyond mere bundling) an attempt to leverage a monopoly in one market to monopolize a different market. So, no, it's not like any Linux distribution bundling a third-party browser like Firefox…

Honest question: if Microsoft didn't bundle IE and the user hadn't received a copy of those ubiquitous AOL CD-ROMs which came in the mail/magazines (and sometimes carried the Netscape Navigator installer), how is the user expected to consume content on the web without a web browser? Surely, you'll at least need a decent web browser to get online to download a different browser of your choice, no?

> if Microsoft didn't bundle IE and the user hadn't received a copy of those ubiquitous AOL CD-ROMs which came in the mail/magazines (and sometimes carried the Netscape Navigator installer), how is the user expected to consume content on the web without a web browser?

Go to store, by a CD with browser, install. The age when boxed software was a major thing extended past the point when IE started bundling IE.

Of course, with a TCP/IP stack you can get software from the internet a lot of ways without a web browser, too. FTP was a thing, after all.

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

#315
post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Microsoft often doesn't get the benefit of the doubt because of their history of incredibly aggressive, borderline unethical behavior. Being a convicted monopolist tends to color people's attitudes to a company. Let alone something ridiculous like trying to destroy the open source movement in its nascent stages, stealing Google's search results, or running the completely insane Scroogled campaign. And all the o…

Ironically, people seem to forgive Apple a lot of similar practices.

Can you provide an example, with a citation? :)

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

#316

"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 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 point is that something seems to be actively looking at the user-agent string and then doing wrong things. Had they merely "not supported" Linux it would have worked fine. Now it might still be a bug rather than malice, but it's a but that arises out of intentionally doing something stupid.

And the parent comment's point is that bug won't reach the team responsible for that :-)

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

#317
post #252

"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 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.…

Well, Microsoft often doesn't get the benefit of the doubt because of their history of incredibly aggressive, borderline unethical behavior. Being a convicted monopolist tends to color people's attitudes to a company. Let alone something ridiculous like trying to destroy the open source movement in its nascent stages, stealing Google's search results, or running the completely insane Scroogled campaign. And all the o…

What was insane or wrongful about the Scroogled campaign? Besides the dorky name.

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

#318
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.

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

#319
post #255
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get the same results on DuckDuckGo, etc. there's no search engine lock-in here.

Sorry, doesn't DDG use Google as a back-end, just anonymizing the results?

DDG uses a variety of search engines' responses, including Google's. It has its own crawler as well.

https://duck.co/help/results/sources

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

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's running in a web browser. The OS doesn't make much of a difference.

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…

I don't think changing the user agent string affects which codecs or device drivers are available on the client. If changing the user agent string "solves" the problem, then the problem is most likely with the site - especially if the same problem and solution exist between different browsers. They are probably assuming some capability is absent instead of testing and gracefully degrading.

I wonder what happens in Windows 10 with a user agent mimicking a Linux environment. Does the site slow down? If so, the support bot can't brush it off since it's a supported operating system.

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