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Microsoft's OneDrive Web App Crippled With Performance Issues On Linux and Chrome OS (theregister.co.uk)

Posted by msmash on from the microsoft-loves-linux dept.

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".

2 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. Logic? by Anonymous Coward · · 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.

  2. Re:homily by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "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.