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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)

#461

Post by NoGravitas »

dim13 wrote: post #436
ebang4 wrote: post #401

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),…

> The issue was resolved as of Tue, March 22nd 3pm PST. Just tried (Thu Mar 23 10:25:18 CET 2017) -- the bug is still here.

Fixed in test, not in production yet.

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

#462

Post by fjdlwlv »

ebang4 wrote: post #401

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),…

Why was the issue ignored for several months, and then fixed in one day when it hit the front page of HN?

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

#463

Post by aendruk »

wyaeld wrote: post #424
ebang4 wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i336, hello from Redmond! With less efficient technique, I refer to using , , tags to prefetch content, which does not have the goodness of link prefetching mentioned in the article your shared. That is what Chrome on Linux was falling back to. Link Prefetching is the way to go, and that is what Chrome on (Mac/Windows/Chrome OS) is currently using. The reason why browser detection is needed is because it is not suppo…

Edgar, you might be interested to know there are significant problems with the big javascript files being downloaded on Linux for Office365, particularly for WordOnline. We've done similar experiments and proven it to be again based on your own user-agent detection, since normally they will take 30-60 seconds to load, causing the UI to essentially lock up and fail, when faking the agent-user to something else will wo…

You're describing the same issue. OneDrive is only affected because it preloads Office assets.

Other products (e.g. Teams, Office itself) are also affected for the same reason, and spoofing user agents to just officeapps.live.com works around the issue on all of them.

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

#464

Post by alexval »

faragon wrote: post #431
ebang4 wrote: post #401

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),…

So for the "New Microsoft" releasing a bug fix for a "bug" affecting customers using Linux for more than 3 months it just required to be popular at Hacker News and Reddit.

Sometimes at a large company feedback from support and those customer forms doesn't make it all the way back to the engineers. The engineers read hacker news. As soon as they saw this it makes sense that they fixed it.

Seems like the pipeline for customer feedback could be improved.

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

#465

Post by annnnd »

kayoone wrote: post #458
annnnd wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real difference is that now we have a choice. With Windows there was monopoly and it was practically impossible to use another platform if you wanted to exchange documents with others and similar (which is basic functionality for computer). IMHO what Apple is doing only harms themselves. While they had Steve Jobs they could be successful in spite of their practices, but with no breakthroughs for some years now su…

They still make the biggest chunk of profit in the mobile space by some margin. Google might beat them in all technical departments, but Apple is making tons of cash from iOS.

Sure, they still make a ton of money, but I am arguing that their power is declining due to stagnation in innovations. Once the cycle reverses the profits will follow too. All IMHO, of course.

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

#466

Post by annnnd »

josteink wrote: post #427
annnnd wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 capabili…

> It seems like a bad idea to check for capabilities by parsing user agent string anyway In theory yes. But for some cases it's just not realistic to do feature-detection, and then you move on to the second best option you have. I'm pretty sure we'll have user-agent related bugs for quite a time to come.

Sure, but that is for some very limited cases. And even then you should generally check for browser and its version, not the OS. Browser makers go to great lengths to make browsers run identically on all supported platforms.

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

#467

Post by annnnd »

greenzebra wrote: post #423
annnnd wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 capabili…

I am curious how @annnd detects whether link prefetching is supported by a browser in js on-the-fly (reliably and in a performant way) http://caniuse.com/#feat=link-rel-prefetch . There are many capabilities you can quickly detect, but for that one I can't think of a performant way. Test your solution with Safari on a Mac, which should return false.

I haven't tried detecting whether link prefetching is supported by a browser yet. Not that I think it should even be detected, because those are hints to the browser. If you need to depend on them there is something else wrong with the way you design your apps.

But if you still insist you need it, I don't think detection should be that difficult. When user comes to the page for the first time you put a hidden link somewhere with prefetch turned on. Then you ask server if the page has been accessed. And because you only make this check once (for instance on login page while the user is typing) it is performant enough.

Is it easier to whitelist? Sure. But we have seen here how reliable whitelisting is.

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

#468

Post by annnnd »

ams6110 wrote: post #453
annnnd wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 capabili…

> Not performing testing on Linux is inexcusable in my book in this day and age. 1. There are probably more IE7 users hitting OneDrive than Linux users of all distros combined. Should the fact that there are some users of a platform obligate MS to support it? 2. If you're running Linux on the desktop, you've made a decision to eschew all the major commercial software/OS vendors (particularly Microsoft and Apple). Why…

I don't care either, FWIW.I haven't used OneDrive yet and I probably never will. But the reason I will not use it is exactly this - I know I will always be unwanted customer in their eyes. And I don't trust them not to throw me under the bus if they feel like it. I should probably say "...is inexcusable to me in this...". Thought it was obvious.

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

#469

Post by jernfrost »

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?

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

#470

Post by Symbiote »

Qwertious wrote: post #421
Symbiote wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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.

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.

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