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

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".

Comments

Let's cause problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone on Windows change your user agent to say Linux.

Now "fixed"

[Anonymous Coward]

Interestingly, after the "oversight" was made public the issue is "fixed" by Microsoft.

See the first comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13932226

Re:Now "fixed"

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Now "fixed"

[fisted]

Lets give them the benefit of the doubt

Again?

Re:Now "fixed"

[im_thatoneguy]

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 killed speeds up a website. You lose some piece of functionality you didn't realize the website was trying to provide and your experience greatly improves. That's the entire concept behind adblockers: trim superfluous javascripts to improve privacy and performance.

Only the beginning

[johanw]

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.

Logic?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

homily

[SadOldTechie]

"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

[johanw]

History taught us that if one deals with MS, it should be "Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by malice".

Re:homily

[Anonymous Coward]

"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

[rickb928]

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.

Meet the new MS...

[bazmail]

.... same as the old MS.

Drop OneDrive and use something that doesn't disrespect your choices.

Re:Microsoft == dumbass

[cheater512]

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

[ColdWetDog]

The job ain't done until Linux won't run

Old news

[scumdamn]

This issue was discussed on /r/linux two days ago and it was fixed yesterday.

Flying the Antitrust Buffet

[ytene]

Microsoft have plenty of experience at being subject to judicial oversight and investigation, so the chances of any smoking gun being found in this specific case seems completely unlikely.

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..."

Re:Microsoft == dumbass

[Bert64]

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.

Give back to Caesar what is Caesar's..

[jimtheowl]

and to Microsoft what is Microsoft's.

This should not be a surprise and is nothing new.
Don't expect Microsoft to look at anyone's interests but their own.

Not unexpected

[Lead Butthead]

Microsoft LOVES Linux!

... specifically, M$ loves to have it disappear.