Microsoft's OneDrive Web App Crippled With Performance Issues On Linux and Chrome OS (theregister.co.uk) 114
Iain Thomson, reporting for The Register: Plenty of Linux users are up in arms about the performance of the OneDrive web app. They say that when accessing Microsoft's cloudy storage system in a browser on a non-Windows system -- such as on Linux or ChromeOS -- the service grinds to a barely usable crawl. But when they use a Windows machine on the same internet connection, speedy access resumes. Crucially, when they change their browser's user-agent string -- a snippet of text the browser sends to websites describing itself -- to Internet Explorer or Edge, magically their OneDrive access speeds up to normal on their non-Windows PCs. In other words, Microsoft's OneDrive web app slows down seemingly deliberately when it appears you're using Linux or some other Windows rival. This has been going on for months, and complaints flared up again this week after netizens decided enough is enough. When gripes about this suspicious slowdown have cropped up previously, Microsoft has coldly reminded people that OneDrive for Business is not supported on Linux, thus the crap performance is to be expected. But when you change the user-agent string of your browser on Linux to match IE or Edge, suddenly OneDrive's web code runs fine. The original headline of the story is, "Microsoft loves Linux so much, its OneDrive web app runs like a dog on Windows OS rivals".
Let's cause problems (Score:2, Funny)
Everyone on Windows change your user agent to say Linux.
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Not that anyone on Windows could figure out how, but it would be hilarious if it happened.
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Edge/12.10136 (Linux)
Microsoft == dumbass (Score:1)
I would presume that Microsoft knows about this problem and really I would think that the OneDrive Program Manager should be hopping up and down demanding the problem is fixed.
In my company, we have Linux (Ubuntu with some Mint recently), Windows (primarily 7, avoiding 10 like the plague as much as possible), Mac OS, & ChromeOS - using Dropbox for sharing data right now but will need a better solution over the next few months.
Thanx for the article,
OneDrive for Buisness != Not my Business
Re:Microsoft == dumbass (Score:5, Insightful)
More likely the Program Manager is saying "Good work guys! It works perfectly."
There isn't any legitimate reason for the useragent to be screwing it up like this.
Re:Microsoft == dumbass (Score:5, Insightful)
The job ain't done until Linux won't run
Not unexpected (Score:3)
Microsoft LOVES [microsoft.com] Linux!
... specifically, M$ loves to have it disappear.
Re:Microsoft == dumbass (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it's not a bug to fix, if they're checking the user agent string and explicitly throttling performance then this clearly must be intentional sabotage to try and make competing platforms look bad.
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It seems it's not active throttling, just fallback to failsafe set of features; it's not the issue of specifically "Firefox+Linux", it's the general "Other".
Instead of feature detection, they sniff the UA string and upon failing to find a "supported browser" serve code for "unsupported" which is woefully unoptimal.
So, not evil, just lazy and incompetent.
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So, not evil, just lazy and incompetent.
Typical Microsoft then. Why do it right when you don't have to?
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Re: Microsoft == dumbass (Score:2)
Why in the world would you be using a 3rd party service? Putting together a Synology box is trivial, and it can back up to most cloud services with client-side encryption. You get storage space that's limited only by your hard drive space and the freedom and security of your own cloud service.
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Actually OneDrive is a PoS in general. We have it at work, and when it comes to the sync client, I have to go around to each computer for every user and do this to get it working the first time (Relevant post here [microsoft.com]):
1. Kill all instances of any Office application.
2. Clear out any office related credentials saved in the Credential Manager.
3. Go to %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office\ and delete the "Spw" and "16.0\OfficeFileCache" subdirectories.
4. Launch some other office program (Word / Excel / etc
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Well if you were a schlub, it could make sense that you do just the opposite instead. So it the case you mention, slow windows machine down instead and pretend it was a mistake if found out.
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A professional is someone who is paid for his work. If I didn't do what was asked of me I wouldn't get paid and I would not be a professional.
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"Ordnung ist Ordnung" ceased to be a valid devence since Nuremberg.
Professional doesn't take an unethical job.
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If you are a professional programmer and were asked to do this, what would you do?
I wouldn't do it.
You do what Mel did. Read the story of Mel.
Now "fixed" (Score:5, Informative)
Interestingly, after the "oversight" was made public the issue is "fixed" by Microsoft.
See the first comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13932226
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A bug in Chrome? Fixed by a change in the user agent string to make the browser look like Internet Explorer or Edge?
You don't belong on the internet. Go back to your job at Radio Shack.
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Go back to your job at Radio Shack.
Speaking of potential Radio Shack employees... changing the user string is a perfectly plausible fix.
Let's say you have a bug that creates an expensive UI watch thread. When you change your user agent the UI library will deliver the wrong version of the javascript that either is in a different commit that doesn't have the bug or the script fails to execute on the 'wrong' platform, raises an error to the console and dies (and no longer wasting resources). Sometimes a javascript thread crashing and being ki
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Well, first of all, it's a plausible fix but only for really badly-written javascript. Even back when it was necessary sometimes, it was still ill-advised to serve a different copy of the page to every browser. You're much better writing browser-agnostic code. Yes, they do have a common denominator of functionality that makes that possible if you're competent. Second of all, even if true, all this proves is they wrote ONE case for IE and broke everything else on purpose. In summary, your argument just
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Hey just to rub it in here is the official Microsoft statement on the bug.
Edgar explains that it needed to detect the browser being used because not every browser supports prefetching. While a technique it used worked with Safari on Mac, it hung for Chrome on Linux.
"The second technique does not hang on Safari on Mac, but it does on Chrome on Linux. We will definitely ensure that more Linux testing is done."
What do you know, it was a compatibility issue where different solutions were used on different browsers and changing your User String would result in a different code path working better.
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Yea, but UA string matching/parsing IS NOT "feature recognition." Feature recognition is done by testing individual functions and objects for known behaviors. Be really careful about being a non-coder reading reddit posts by novice coders and thinking that means you know stuff about how code works.
Re:Now "fixed" (Score:4, Funny)
Lets give them the benefit of the doubt
Again?
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there's a bug in Chrome
Yeah, it dared to tell Microsoft that it was Chrome. If it had just shut up and pretended to be Edge then nothing would have happened.
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Are you sure?
Firefox/FreeBSD anyone? Or not sending UA string at all? Or Lynx/MS-DOS UA string?
TFA claims it was just a failsafe/fallback for "Other/Unsupported". I'm honestly curious.
Only the beginning (Score:3)
The next step qill be that it becomes deadlow if you're still using XP or windows 7, and show a popup that for a decent performance you ned to downgrade to winspam 10.
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Nope, at a 3 letter agency obviously. He never said that his organization was using windows 10, just that "users" loved it.
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You are not a user, you are a developer. Users at the place I work for don't require Administrator to do anything, don't install anything, they just login answer email and use the programs that are installed and fully supported by the IT dept. Their machines reboot at night when it is scheduled by IT just like they always have. I've found that they don't even know what version of OS they are on as long as the stuff they need for day to day work functions, e.g. email, and the apps that are put there as part
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"M$ haters who are gonna hate no matter what", are you serious, you have to be kidding, Seriously, there is so much to hate about M$, as a piece of shit privacy invasive pack of ass hats, there is no need to bother with "no matter what", there are plenty of reasons to well and truly loathe that pack ass hat.
In this case, the claim is poor little M$ could not afford to buy one Linux computer to test it before putting it out, way beyond their tiny little budget, pity the poor softies. There are plenty of rea
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I can't argue the multitude of reasons to hate M$, but the fact that a free service they are offering doesn't play well with their competitors products, and that they did not spend enough money to ensure that it did seems a bit over the top. That they bothered to even ensure/provide that it functioned at all seems sort of a good thing, let alone tuned it to run well. Do you think Chrome(google) or Apple is less invasive on the privacy side ?
As for "could not afford to buy a Linux computer", I've never seen
Logic? (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't know much about this cloud stuff, but there must be a shitload of these online storage services, and for some reason Linux users had to choose Microsoft.
Re: Logic? (Score:1)
Same old same old (Score:2)
Same old Microsoft, same old thugs, nobody should forget that.
homily (Score:2)
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". Not to say MS aren't often malicious ( or "competitive"), but having used a pile of their software today I can certainly say there's much that's badly written.
Re:homily (Score:5, Funny)
History taught us that if one deals with MS, it should be "Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by malice".
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Actually the correct quote reading MS would be : "it's malice"
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"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"
I love how people will use this stupid fucking quote to explain away any nasty shit, no matter how blatantly obvious it was deliberate.
Please explain to me how this could possibly be an accident. You're the second poster to pretend this was somehow a mistake.
Oops...my fingers slipped and I accidentally typed "if (userAgent != MS) socket.throttleLikeAMoFo();" in exactly the "wrong" place.
Re:homily (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I deal with an internal web app that does something similar, poor performance with diffing agent strings being presented, between IE9/11, Chrome, Safari, and Firefox browsers hitting it and getting very very different experiences.
The cause is attempts at code optimizations, some not done well at all. Despite their best efforts, none of our tech teams can blame some grand conspiracy with Microsoft, since no motive exists for this.
But our users find evidence when IE works so much better than, for instance, Chrome. Until a month ago, that is, when the JVMs got to be working properly, and woot, now IE is the slog despite working just as before, and Chrome is blazingly fast. Now it's a grand conspiracy to kill IE use at the enterprise level.
Ya can't win, ya know. whatever you do, if the browsers get different performance results, you're doing it deliberately, because there is some reason...
More reason to avoid web programming. Servicing is still a sweet spot around here.
Re: homily (Score:1)
Google MyDrive (Score:1)
I think the same ting happens when using Google Drive on Windows.
Meet the new MS... (Score:5, Insightful)
Drop OneDrive and use something that doesn't disrespect your choices.
Old news (Score:3)
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So what you're saying is record time for a Slashdot post.
Flying the Antitrust Buffet (Score:3)
However, if anyone actually captured reliable evidence that a change in the User Agent string could generate such remarkably different outcomes, then there is a question to answer here. Adjusting the performance of one product [their Cloud offering] to favour another Product [the combination of Windows and Edge] would appear to fall pretty close to the definition of "tying", something that Microsoft have direct experience of - they were fined, for example, for tying Windows Media Player to Windows - so it would be interesting to see what could have happened had the outage been more widespread or prolonged.
I think this sort of activity is becoming more widespread with time, not less. Despite the protections apparently afforded us by the law, we see far more bending of the laws than ever before. It's as though we've entered the "Scooby Doo Era" - "Yes, and I would've gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for you pesky kids!!!"
To which I'd add, "Nice work, kids..."
Well, surprise-surprise! (Score:1)
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> So if you have say 100 users and 3 use linux then would
> you devote 50% of your resources to service those 3 users?
I know this is Slashdot, but please RTFA. Microsoft *DELIBERATELY* *WENT* *OUT* *OF* *THEIR* *WAY* to add UA-parsing code which then slowed down non-MS users. They actually expended additional effort to sabotage non-MS users.
Give back to Caesar what is Caesar's.. (Score:3)
This should not be a surprise and is nothing new.
Don't expect Microsoft to look at anyone's interests but their own.
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Can you name a company that looks at anyone's interests but their own?
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I also have weird problems with outlook.com on non-Windows machines.
Everything old is new again... (Score:2)
This isn't the first instance of this. Look at any OWA instance or ASP(.net) site. Limited functionality when being honest about the browser, enhanced (working) functionality when you claim to be a Microsoft browser. So they reused old code...
Why is this even news? (Score:2)
People have no long term memory, or believe the marketing drones?
Everything Microsoft puts out is made to give an advantage to Windows, even if it seems alternative OS friendly.
Do you think the Linux subsystem is available out of friendliness? On the contrary, it's there so people can migrate their Linux stuff to Windows. I bet there are minor subtle incompatibilities that are easily fixed but then make your stuff windows specific too.
yup, as bad as it sounds (Score:2)
Microsoft greatly improved the smb protocol between Server 2008r2 and Server 2012. Increased performance of smb and encryption are also selling points Microsoft hammers to encourage upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10.
BUT now that I've shown my "Microsoft certified professional" bias, I actually read the article: this was within a web browser, and most damning = "But when you change the user-agent string of your browser on Linux to match IE or Edge, suddenly OneDrive's web code runs fine. "
So this re
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You haven't been watching the news lately, have you? Basically here's what happened a couple weeks ago when they tried to stop it: We found out that the only force less stoppable than Trump is Microsoft.