Microsoft loves Linux so much, its OneDrive web app runs like a dog on Windows OS rivals

Ever since Satya Nadella took over the reins at Microsoft, the Windows giant has been talking up how much it loves Linux – but it appears this hasn't trickled down to its OneDrive team. 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 …

[Red Bren]

Red Bren's Axe

"If we're being charitable to Redmond, we'd say this is a case of Hanlon's Razor: never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

I'm not feeling charitable so let us apply Red Bren's axe: never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by greed!

[TheVogon]

Re: Red Bren's Axe

Presumably it switches to using Linux on the back end when you use it as a client...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Red Bren's Axe

I'd like to submit another variant if I may.

never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately attributed to Microsoft.

[Flocke Kroes]

You mean the NT kernel wasn't written in Brainfuck?

I thought that was their excuse.

[Kiwi]

Re: You mean the NT kernel wasn't written in Brainfuck?

You mean the NT kernel wasn't written in Brainfuck?

No no no.. It was written by someone who's brain was fucked.

[redpawn]

Loved to Death

Redmond loves Linux like Trump loves the poorly educated.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Loved to Death

Trump loves the poorly educated, they voted for him.

[Pascal Monett]

Re: Loved to Death

Trump loves the poorly educated as long as they remain nowhere near him.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Loved to Death

It looks to me most of people around Trump are poorly educated. Not poor, but poorly educated yes.

[AMBxx]

Re: Loved to Death

Just because some disagrees with you politically, don't assume they're unintelligent or uneducated. That's always been the conceit of the left. It's also dangerous to underestimate those you oppose.

[tojb]

Re: Loved to Death

No need to assume anything AMBxx.... we can measure the lack of education, stats here:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/even-among-the-wealthy-education-predicts-trump-support/

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/education-put-donald-trump-in-the-white-house/508703/

Inferring unintelligence from a lack of education is of course dangerous with individuals, but holds very strongly when you look at statistics over larger samples.

[AMBxx]

Re: Loved to Death

I wasn't commenting on his supporters (neither was the OP), but on Trump and his entourage. Take a trip to Wikipedia - they have some pretty impressive alumni.

[P. Lee]

Re: Loved to Death

>Inferring unintelligence holds very strongly when you look at statistics over larger samples.

FTFY

Humans in large groups are stupid.

[fidodogbreath]

Re: Loved to Death

STOP IT, PLEASE! I BEG OF YOU!

Must every comment forum in the entire English-speaking world be overrun by US liberal vs. conservative bleating?!?!?

[Nolveys]

Re: Loved to Death

That's always been the conceit of the left.

Stupid lefties, always judging intelligence based on political orientation.

[anonymous boring coward]

Re: Loved to Death

I don't think anyone disputes that there are many highly intelligent a-holes. They just lack a certain something in their overall intelligence makeup.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Re: Loved to Death

But it's a fair comment, AMBxx. Trump has filled many posts with people who aren't experienced or educated in the job area that they're supposed to be managing. I'm not going to look up a list, but Rex Tillerson, for one, has no experience in the public sector or the military, and yet he's been doing the rounds trying to be a diplomat. There are many other examples. The guy with control over the EPA doesn't "believe" in man-made global warming/climate change, for one. Maybe faith/believe trumps science?

I don't underestimate Trump or many of his appointees in the same way that I don't underestimate a rabid and unpredictable dog.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Loved to Death

"but Rex Tillerson, for one, has no experience in the public sector or the military, "

I'll see your Rex Tillerson and raise you a Boris Johnson!!!

Icon, because they both are!

[Rattus Rattus]

Re: Loved to Death

"Just because some disagrees with you politically, don't assume they're unintelligent or uneducated"

I never assume that someone is unintelligent or uneducated merely because they disagree with me politically. I assume it when they demonstrate they are unintelligent or uneducated. It's hardly my fault that the two frequently coincide.

[anonymous boring coward]

Re: Loved to Death

Unfortunately for Trump, you can't get much nearer than inside himself.

But he loves himself unconditionally, so it's OK.

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: Loved to Death

> Trump loves the poorly educated, they voted for him.

Tone-deafness, clannishness, leftist superiority complex and considers himself the flag-bearer of all things good.

You are the reason Trump won.

[tojb]

Re: Loved to Death

*sigh* it was a factually correct comment though, education level is anticorrelated to trump support. Maybe it isn't sensitive to mention it, or to imply that lack of education is a bad thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Loved to Death

>Tone-deafness, clannishness, leftist superiority complex and considers himself the flag-bearer of all things good.

Just because I think someone is an arsehole why does that suddenly define my political leanings ?

There are plenty in The Republican Party who also thought the man was a clown with simpleton tendencies and still do, he's just not Jacob Rees-Mogg (AKA The Undertaker) calibre.

[Mark Ruit]

Re: Loved to Death

Brilliant. Anyone who can work the Donald and Jacob R-M into the same posting deserves an upvote

[Dr Stephen Jones]

Re: Loved to Death

@Destroy

+1

It's why they keep losing too, throwing their toys out of the pram. Will they ever learn?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Loved to Death

Voting is a sign of a lack of education....Or, maybe it's a sign of too much education and not enough thinking...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Loved to Death

I thought Trump was right wing? Usually it's the left / socialists that are mostly drawn from the poor and the poorly educated....

[redpawn]

Re: Loved to Death

"We won the evangelicals. We won with young. We won with old. We won with highly educated. We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated,"-Trump

The poorly educated will be hardest hit by his planned cuts.

[munkiepus]

Re: Loved to Death

Anyone know if there's a trump equivalent of Godwins law? If there is, this one sure got there fast.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Loved to Death

>Anyone know if there's a trump equivalent of Godwins law? If there is, this one sure got there fast.

It's called the Law Of Who Breaks Wind First.

[Pat 11]

Great news

Linux users have found a browser hack to make onedrive perform acceptably in Windows?

[Ken Hagan]

Re: Great news

Even better, it is now only a matter of time before someone writes a browser extension that checks whether the domain you've just connected to is owned by Microsoft and changes the user-agent string to pretend that the client OS is Windows.

More seriously, if Edge is as HTML5-compliant as MS claim then why not make *every* browser say "I am Edge. Feed me pure HTML5 goodness.". Nothing would break, right?

Even more seriously, can we not spin this into a story that says "Don't use OneDrive for anything. It only works on some platforms and some of your customers won't be able to see your files." or perhaps we could post an impartial benchmark (particularly if Android is affected in the same way) that "proves" how OneDrive is ten times slower than every other cloud storage offering out there. MS are no longer in a position to play this game, so let's punish them for trying.

[Steve Graham]

Re: Great news

"Even better, it is now only a matter of time before someone writes a browser extension that checks whether the domain you've just connected to is owned by Microsoft and changes the user-agent string to pretend that the client OS is Windows."

I installed exactly this kind of extension yesterday in Vivaldi, my new choice of browser (Mozilla broke sound output in Linux). But not to fix a Microsoft site. It's Google Maps which doesn't work in Vivaldi, unless you pretend to be using Chrome on Windows.

And the Chrome-style extension that allows you to spoof the user agent on a site-by-site basis... written by a company called Google Inc.

Here's a great idea: why don't web developers make sites that comply with web standards instead of coding to browser quirks?

[sabroni]

Re: But not to fix a Microsoft site. It's Google Maps which doesn't work in Vivaldi

Yeah, but I'm sure there's perfectly good reason for Google to use user agent sniffing. It's when M$ do it that it's a massive problem!

[Roland6]

Re: Great news

"Even better, it is now only a matter of time before someone writes a browser extension that checks whether the domain you've just connected to is owned by Microsoft and changes the user-agent string to pretend that the client OS is Windows."

Given what has been known about the user-agent string for many years now, (I remember there was a third-party add-on for ealry versions of IE that allowed you to play around with the user-agent string) I'm a little surprised that this functionality (website/domain specfic user-agent string) hasn't been a standard part of either third-party browsers such as Firefox or internet security suites for some years.

[Alumoi]

Re: Great news

Here's a great idea: why don't web developers make sites that comply with web standards instead of coding to browser quirks?

Maybe it has something to do with the vast majority of internet population using whatever browser they have on their devices? You know, IE for Windows, Safari for Apple and Chrome for Android? Which we all know they stricly adhere to web standards, right?

So why code stricly to standards? Just to have your boss yell that the site doesn't work in IE/Safari/Chrome?

[Geriant]

Re: Great news

What's that got to do with Donald Trump?

[Anonymous Coward]

We've been there before .. in 1991

Clearly the old dog is incapable of learning new tricks.

I guess they thought that people would have forgotten about it by now as that was 26 years ago.

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: We've been there before .. in 1991

Good old times. That long ago already.

I noticed one apparently can still get the Kein Mitleid für Microsoft jack-booted penguin quick-justice-providing T-shirt (maybe).

[werdsmith]

Re: We've been there before .. in 1991

For the same reason, iTunes is a pain in the butt on Windows. Even worse than it is on OS X.

[anonymous boring coward]

Re: We've been there before .. in 1991

I have wondered why iTunes is such a dog on Windows. Always assumed it was Apple trying to make osX (I don't know how to capitalise it any more) look better than Windows (not that hard).

Scrolling an album art collection is pathetic. As if programmed by some work experience kid.

[Updraft102]

Re: We've been there before .. in 1991

That seems like a counterproductive idea on Apple's part. Even if the Windows version of iTunes is a lot worse than the Mac version (I've not seen either version personally), how many Windows users are going to see the Mac version and see how much better it is? They (being Windows users) will probably only see the Windows version. If Apple is going to sell its image as a premium brand that's worth paying more for because it works better, it would make sense that they make sure their products for other platforms project that to all of the future potential Apple customers out there.

[Hans 1]

Re: We've been there before .. in 1991

>Scrolling an album art collection is pathetic. As if programmed by some work experience kid.

Don't blame lack of performance on the software package installed on Windows, that is just unfair. If you do not have privileged access to hidden functions, your software sucks on Windows ... their way of saying: we are better coders ... never heard of private* TCP/IP networks, but better coders.

*See my other comment

Yours,

Hans 1

Accenture MHP

Adobe MHP

Microsoft MHP

PS: El reg, signatures, please ;-) I <3 el reg!

[Richard 12]

Re: We've been there before .. in 1991

Yet my several thousand unique image scrolling display scrolls smoothly and quickly on Windows.

Also on Linux.

It took an hour or so to write, and less to port and reuse.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: We've been there before .. in 1991

@Hans 1

What does MHP stands for? Microsoft Hate Partner? Microsoft Hating Party? Most Hated Person?

[Kiwi]

Re: We've been there before .. in 1991

PS: El reg, signatures, please ;-) I <3 el reg!

NOOOOOOO! Please El Reg, keep your site clean from those horrible things!

Most posts here are fairly short, and to see the huge wastes of space that most signatures are would really make a mess of things here. Once you've seen it a few dozen times it gets really bad.

And if you're really nasty, you get those sites where signatures can have several large pictures in each persons sig. 20 bytes of post followed by a few megs of picture followed by 6 bytes of post, 20 bytes of quoted post, and a few megs of quoted picutres, followed by another 6 bytes of post, 6 bytes of quoted post, 20 bytes of re-quoted post and a few megs of re-quoted picture plus several megs of new picutre... NOOOOO!

If you do add sigs, then please make it reasonable. Like, max 1 line. And 6 characters should be enough for anybody!

[bombastic bob]

Re: We've been there before .. in 1991

thanks for the memories, and keep up the watchdogging

(from the "nothing out of Redmond surprises me" department)

[Anonymous Coward]

Onedrivegate

"What's likely happening here is that Microsoft is being super lazy and checking the user-agent string to see which version of its code it should serve to the browser: presumably, there are different versions tailored for IE 11, IE 7, Edge, and so on. Chrome or Firefox on Linux, for example, fall through the list of supported agents, and thus end up getting a crippled old version that doesn't work properly."

Plausible deniability.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Onedrivegate

Dunno, works fine in Chrome on windows...

[stephanh]

so why not just use Dropbox?

Works great cross-platform in my experience.

Not sure why people keep bothering with vendor-specific Dropbox-clones. (Google Drive, Onebox). They are all deeply inferior me-too products in my opinion (also in sucking up all your internet bandwidth).

[Paul Crawford]

Re: so why not just use Dropbox?

Because they can all spy on you?

If you are going to use cloud storage then go for one of the "zero knowledge" types like Sync, SpiderOak, etc, that allow you to hold the only encryption keys for your data.

[MacroRodent]

Re: so why not just use Dropbox?

For me the reason has been than MS provided a pile of storage for free. (Due to various grandfathered offerings, it is currently 40Gb with no payments - will not apply to any latecomers, nyah nyah). But if MS starts being this evil to Linux OneDrive users, I guess I will reconsider.

Btw there also exist programs for using OneDrive without a browser on Linux to sync directories, but so far I have been too lazy to find out how well they work.

[DrXym]

Re: so why not just use Dropbox?

Dropbox is no better. I have 2 or 3 thousand files in my Dropbox folder and it takes about a minute from the time I log into Windows for me to be able to type and for it to respond in a timely fashion.

The reason for this is that Dropbox kicks off at startup and reindexes everything in the folderduring that time, consuming CPU and making the PC unresponsive. This is a common complaint and Dropbox have turned a blind eye to it even though this issue has existed for years. At least I only have a few thousand files - some people have tens of thousands and it's even worse.

I haven't compared performance to other cloud storage system - I'm just saying the grass isn't always greener on the other side.

[Kiwi]

Re: so why not just use Dropbox?

I haven't compared performance to other cloud storage system - I'm just saying the grass isn't always greener on the other side.

Owncloud - your own storage, your own servers etc. You might not get the bandwidth of professional systems when you're away from "home", but when you are home the speed is whatever your network can handle.

At startup I have no speed issues. I have 3 accounts on 2 servers backing up various bits of data. I have not noticed any performance lag when the client re-checks for new files, which it does one account at a time. One of the accounts currently has 116G of space used with a little over 23,000 files.

Takes stuff-all to install, though if you want to use files over IIRC 2g make sure you put it on a 64bit server (PHP limitation, not OC itself).

[Will Godfrey]

Interesting

I wonder why so many commentards came to exactly the same instant conclusion about those nice Microsoft people.

Funny that. So did I.

[sabroni]

Re: I wonder why so many commentards came to exactly the same instant conclusion

It's called prejudice.

[BitDr]

Re: I wonder why so many commentards came to exactly the same instant conclusion

While the slow-down when using OneDrive might be the result of coders cutting corners working under time-to-market pressures, the optics of OneDrive's behaviour is not helping their image. Trust is not something that is easily regained once lost, and Microsoft has a long history of playing dirty.

[bombastic bob]

Re: I wonder why so many commentards came to exactly the same instant conclusion

"Microsoft has a long history of playing dirty."

that, and rifling through our content stored in OneDrive.

(Micro-shaft - WORLD POLICE!)

[P. Lee]

Re: I wonder why so many commentards came to exactly the same instant conclusion

>While the slow-down when using OneDrive might be the result of coders cutting corners working under time-to-market pressures...

Except that it isn't the use of a user-agent that's the problem, it's the lack of use of it. This is internet-software and they didn't bother to test it with browser? It looks malicious and that is a problem.

It is a two-edged sword for MS. There's a good chance that getting good one-drive for business access from linux would encourage linux use in the enterprise, but they want to be seen as the good guys.

So we are back to square-one: MS does something, badly: Linux chaps refuse to trust it, even if there a decent work-around. Management (rightly) does not implement a strategy that utilises MS-based linux facilities.

Bring on IPv6 and sshfs.

[DJV]

"It's called prejudice."

Nah, it's called experience...

[Anonymous Coward]

There are already many sites that work on Chrome but poorly on other browsers...

... but no one complains about them. For example, I can no longer login into the Sky website using IE. FreeNAS has now issues with Mozilla as well. Lame web developers who are targeting the single browser they're using.

Chrome is becoming the new IE, and Google already became the new Microsoft. But it has enough groupie who really believe they get stuff for free to avid the flack it deserves as much as MS.

[Nick Ryan]

Re: There are already many sites that work on Chrome but poorly on other browsers...

It's not just lame developers targetting the single browser they're using, it's also lame developers using inappropriate and unnecessary (JavaScript) code when they could just use the standard features of the web browser's HTML/CSS or just don't add utterly unnecessary and pointless things to a website in the delusion that it's a desktop based modal client application.

[patrickstar]

Re: There are already many sites that work on Chrome but poorly on other browsers...

There are sites that literally refuse to serve anything except download instructions for Chrome if you visit with IE.

Also, quite a few sites give you a 403 if you try to access them with Lynx, but work fine if you change the User-Agent header... IIRC they are behind CloudFlare or such and have enabled filtering of clients sending "invalid" user agents.

All that's missing for them is to add a little banner saying "This site best viewed with Netscape Navigator 3.0"... but with the last part crossed out and replaced with "Chrome 97" (or whatever the current version is). Wasn't the whole point of things like web standards to avoid precisely this? Also, wasn't this one of the reasons people were so upset with Microsoft/IE in the 90s/early 2000s?

[werdsmith]

Re: There are already many sites that work on Chrome but poorly on other browsers...

t's not just lame developers targetting the single browser they're using, it's also lame developers using inappropriate and unnecessary (JavaScript) code

Like JQuery?

[tony2heads]

For those who want to know

Here is a simple How to

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft

OneDrive speedy only on the Edge.

That's suicidal, literally.

[Steve Davies 3]

Re: Microsoft

I guess MS are sailng a bit 'Close to the Edge'

'Seasons will pass you by' (waiting for MS to understand Linux)

'I get down, I get by' (by changing my browser thingy'

with apoligies to all 'Yes' fans but it was too good to miss

[Tom Paine]

Re: Microsoft

pling, plong, plinggggg... okay!

[imcdnzl]

Fixed now

Pleased to report that this has been fixed. There are lots of Linux users inside Microsoft also working with the product teams to make things better (Disclaimer - I work for Microsoft, opinions my own).

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_onedrivefb-mso_o365brs/onedrive-for-business-open-is-very-slow-on-linux/3d33dc1b-3cc3-4c24-9998-9ab96bad31fc

[Lennart Sorensen]

Re: Fixed now

Except as the last few comments there say, it isn't actually fixed for many linux users.

[Hans 1]

Re: Fixed now

The problem is, the 12000 other issues are not, and that is the problem. MS creates metastases, don't go anywhere near it, don't give them any money, I have not since 1997, and that was a one time purchase of an intellimouse, my biggest mistake ever.

I think MS blew their last chance in 1985. They have been BASTARDS since day 1 and ever since.

I even told my company that they did not need to get a Windows/Office license for me, yes, it went that far ... years later, well, we got Office 332, so now I am automagically included in this crap ... and I have not had the time, yet, to flash my Windows 10 laptop, but I have vacation planned in 3 weeks ... I gave it a fair 12 months, or so (18 ????), trial, and it is the lowest form of experience I have around here, yes, my Raspberry Pi B (model 1B, I have 2B and 3 as well), is quicker at sorting my Downloads folder with exactly 550 items by date ... admittedly, it takes W10 between 70 and 130 seconds, on Windows 10, SSD, i5, 16Gb 1600Mhz RAM (I copied the EXACT SAME DATA over to my pi!) ... no, I will not bother track the issue down, I have workarounds in place in cygwin bash, because Ubuntu/W10 breaks our dev env (dev env works fine on Windows/cygwin, Linux, Darwin, FreeBSD).

NB: it is second-hand laptop from my company that was lying about in the sysadmin office because they could not get me an Apple in time ... I would have put Linux on the Macbook anyway, but that is another issue entirely ...

MS are the lowest form of bug purveyors on this planet.

Sincerely,

Hans1

Accenture MHP

Adobe MHP

Microsoft MHP

PS: El'Reg, signatures please, pleaaaaaaaaaaaaaaase!

[Vic]

Re: Fixed now

signatures please

Please, no.

There's enough boilerplate cruft on here already, without automating it...

Vic.

[Kiwi]

Re: Fixed now

signatures please

Please, no.

Couldn't upvote you quickly enough! (and only 5 mins after your post too!)

Have one of these for your words of sanity!

[dajames]

Re: Fixed now

PS: El'Reg, signatures please, pleaaaaaaaaaaaaaaase!

You already have a signature -- see the little silver vulture at the top left of your post? Just next to that it says "Hans 1" -- that's your signature.

That's all the signature you need, and all the signature I want to see here from anyone.

[wolfetone]

It's been like that for months, and I honestly thought it was my laptop that was the problem (running Debian 8). I'd often log in, then go away and get a drink for myself while it loaded whatever it needed. Scroll, often wait another minute for it to catch up, then click on what I needed. After that it was alright, but I only ever go on it for the one or two files anyway.

I didn't even think to try changing the user agent string. And what do you know? The moment I do it normal service is resumed!

But, that said, shame on me for using Office 365. I don't even need it anymore (had to have it while working for a client and their penchant for using .docx and other Office 2013 specific files that screwed up in LibreOffice).

[AMBxx]

How many Onedrive users run Linux?

I'm surprised they noticed. Given Linux users have such antipathy towards MS, surely they're all using Dropbox or one of the umpteen other services?

[MacroRodent]

Re: How many Onedrive users run Linux?

As noted, free storage, especially earlier you could easily get a larger pile than from DropBox, without paying anything.

[Martin Gregorie]

Re: How many Onedrive users run Linux?

When somebody e-mails you a link to an Excel XLSX spreadsheet that turns out to be on Onedrive rather than attaching a spreadsheet file, you suddenly find out if it can be downloaded or not.

As it happened, the sheet was displayed and saved in my user directory with no trouble. I'm running Pale Moon on Fedora 25, so I was pleased when the speadsheet was downloaded reasonably fast, displayed correctly and saved as an XLSX file without issues, and even more pleased to find that oocalc (Libre Office 5) could read and save it as a proper non-proprietary spreadsheet format (.ods).

[Hans 1]

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.

I witnessed that with all MS services, even technet, FFS ... at some point, when you were using Firefox or Chrome, you could not copy paste code snippets without whitespaces being trimmed, until you switched your user agent ... since then, I use IE/Edge user agents on MS products.

OWA 2010 or 2013 on Chrome would not display the "unread" folder unless you switched user agent strings.

Once more, Microsoft cannot be trusted, never, ever ...

How many more examples do you need ?

Sincerely,

Hans1

Microsoft MHP

Adobe MHP

[anthonyhegedus]

In real-life business scenarios, who in their right mind would use that crippled, buggy, useless pile of crap, onedrivel, anyway? So who cares? What kind of linux user would actually ever want to use onedrive?

[Nick Ryan]

Sometimes you have to look beyond idealistic fanboism and understand that businesses tend to gravitate to what they are used to and what works (to some measure of "works").

OneDrive is used because it's not bad, as in it's no worse than DropBox for example, and it comes bundled with Office365 which despite being a recurring revenue stream model forcing vendor lock-in, does have quite a lot of advantages. Admittedly many of these are forced by Microsoft's software and licensing changes but they are there.

This doesn't make OneDrive (for business) any more stable, but it is useful and it is used nonetheless.

[Hans 1]

Sometimes you have to look beyond idealistic fanboism and understand that businesses tend to gravitate to what they are used to and what works (to some measure of "works").

Sometimes you have to look beyond "common sense" and understand that businesses tend to have corporate fallacies in place, for no good reason.

TFTFY

Actually, OneDrive is a new product, NOBODY was used to it before ... since average Joe punter is keeping clear of Windows 8+, onedrive etc, they use their corporate monopoly to force feed it to users.... and, according to Accenture, Office 332, Azure, OneDrive are the best tools for the task .... and apparently, many companies are buying that crap!

BTW, I should really add "Accenture MHP" to my signature.

El'Reg, could we have a signature on these forums, please ?

[Anonymous Coward]

El'Reg, could we have a signature on these forums, please ?

Excellentamundo!

-AJ Rimmer

BSC,SSC

[Sandtitz]

@Hans 1

"Actually, OneDrive is a new product, NOBODY was used to it before ... since average Joe punter is keeping clear of Windows 8+"

It is not a new product. Onedrive/Skydrive was integrated in Windows 8, but it predates Windows 8 for several years.

BTW, have you noticed how the average Joe Sixpacks also keep clear of Linux?

[Hans 1]

Re: @Hans 1

It is not a new product. Onedrive/Skydrive was integrated in Windows 8, but it predates Windows 8 for several years.

But Joe Punter did not know or use OneDrive, that is why it was integrated in to Windows 8 - they thought they could use their monopoly. LOL

BTW, have you noticed how the average Joe Sixpacks also keep clear of Linux?

Well, having Linux on your box requires you to download a file, get appropriate software to flash it onto a USB stick, configure your computer to boot from USB ... anybody who can get this far can install Linux ... it does not beat "shipped with" ... and the mere mention of Windows 8, 8.1, or 10 frightens Joe Punter, so much so that PC sales have plummeted.

[Number6]

El'Reg, could we have a signature on these forums, please ?

Ugh No. Or if it has to happen, a single line of text truncated when it get to the RH side of the column.

[Kiwi]

El'Reg, could we have a signature on these forums, please ?

Ugh No. Or if it has to happen, a single line of text truncated when it get to the RH side of the column.

One of these for you as well my good man!

By the way, might I suggest that signatures be truncated at the left side of the column? I think what would vastly improve their overall aesthetic, if we were forced to have such monstrosities.

[wolfetone]

"What kind of linux user would actually ever want to use onedrive?"

You try working on a Microsoft Office document thats presented to you in a .docx format (for example), edit it in LibreOffice, and send it back to the client without the formatting or anything on that document breaking.

Trust me, from having been there and done that, Office 365 is the only course of action for us Linux types who have to use what the client gives us but don't want to dual boot a Windoze OS with an expensive copy of Office 2016 (or whatever) just for that one sole purpose.

That's what kind of Linux user would use OneDrive. A Linux user who has to put food on the table in a world where idiots still suck on the tit of Microsoft.

[Martin Gregorie]

What kind of linux user would actually ever want to use onedrive?

One who is sent a link to a OneDrive spreadsheet or WP document they need to read?

Here's an example from real life: one of my friends has recently gotten a new PC. As he and his wife are not even sligtly power users, the new box almost certainly runs Windows 10 and would seem to have come with OneDrive preinstalled instead of whatever all-in-one wp+spreadsheet package M$ used to include in consumer-grade Windows packages: I used to get bog-standard Excel XLS spreadsheet attachments from him. This time he just sent me a link to a OneDrive xlsx format spreadsheet, which I was able to download and save (using Fedora 25 running PaleMoon) and then to open it with LibreOffice 5.

[phuzz]

Plus there's the sort of linux user who don't realise they're a linux user, because they just use whichever machine IT have put in front of them, even if a different part of IT have also decided they're going to use Office365 as well.

[bombastic bob]

"What kind of linux user would actually ever want to use onedrive?"

one that doesn't know how to configure apache...

(i.e. make your OWN P2P/cloudy web service, and just copy the files there, etc.)

using https and self-signed certs, naturally [and a free dynamic DNS service can help a lot]

Yeah, WHO NEEDS ONE DRIVE???

[Kiwi]

"What kind of linux user would actually ever want to use onedrive?"

one that doesn't know how to configure apache...

One has to configure Apache? These days things are pretty much done out of the box aren't they, with just a few extras added?

(i.e. make your OWN P2P/cloudy web service, and just copy the files there, etc.)

As mentioned many times.. Owncloud.. There's other offerings out there.

using https and self-signed certs, naturally [and a free dynamic DNS service can help a lot]

LetsEncrypt appears to do a bloody good job of sorting it out so you don't even need self-signed certs (helps lots when you start running your own mail server these days - lots of places flag SSC as "potential spammer" - that said now anyone can get their domain "properly certified" I wonder how long before using Lets Encrypt is flagged badly). And IME "Certbot" or whatever it's called maintains said scripts automatically.

Yeah, WHO NEEDS ONE DRIVE???

For now I have a 250G cloud server that is on my own hardware. If my financial situation changes soon I'll be adding some extra disk. Just yesterday I was playing with the calendaring options on OC (which now comes under "Who needs that MS outhouse shit?") and had a look at some of the other apps. Well worth a look for many places wanting to get away from the MS "offerings" (used in the term of "offering a sacrifice", as in the sanity of those who use MS's garbage)

Most SME's could easily replace any MS stuff with OC, get all the features for none of the price. And not have to worry that they're breaching various privacy laws by editing files in a system which by definition moves the data from their own machines to a 3rd party (under the NZ Privacy act I would suggest that use of any external cloud-service for client data would be illegal - would be well worth taking a damned good look at the legislation and the terms of the cloudy provider!)

[tracker1]

It wasn't malicious

There was a caching method in place supported in windows, but not in osx... Chrome on OSX didn't have the sluggish behavior on the fallback that it has on Linux, same fallback. Safari on osx didn't support the feature at all, so they turned it off for non-windows. It's actually a regression issue with Chrome regarding the fallback. That said, apparently it's corrected/on for the next release/update/patch and should be online soon.

Beyond this, not all functionality can be detected, especially specific browser/version/platform bugs via feature detection. The support agent could have been a bit more courteous, and should have forwarded the issue to the dev team anyway... apparently some devs picked up on the related story via Hacker News earlier yesterday. And they'll be adding linux more testing to the product in question (likely their automated regression suite).

In the end, I believe it wasn't malicious... I've seen MS devs go out of their way to help projects that only even connect to their stuff.

[Hans 1]

Re: It wasn't malicious

>In the end, I believe it wasn't malicious... I've seen MS devs go out of their way to help projects that only even connect to their stuff.

ROFL

[Unicornpiss]

I'd have to say

..that I'm not all that impressed with OneDrive's performance in Windows either. And the OneDrive for Business app is quirky and doesn't like files with too many spaces or special characters in the path or filename. Our department has been tasked with migrating personal data including user profile folders (Desktop, Documents, etc.) to OneDrive. I'll leave it to the reader's imagination how that is going.

In the end I think the old saying rings true: "Never blame malice when mere stupidity will do."

[Kiwi]

Re: I'd have to say

I'll leave it to the reader's imagination how that is going.

In a manner that would make Simon T blush?

I think you'll need a ton of these!

[Zippy's Sausage Factory]

Interesting

MSFT has been pushing "don't use user agent sniffing" in their web development guidelines for years. Shows that their own devs don't actually bother reading their own guidelines.

Actually, Office 2016 has so many bug reversions, I'm wondering whether they didn't just try and cut costs by giving all the dev work on it to interns, but maybe I'm just being cynical...

[Hans 1]

Re: Interesting

> I'm wondering whether they didn't just try and cut costs by giving all the dev work on it to interns...

Come on, all the bright Microsofties left a decade ago, all that's left is a bunch of n00bs I would not even consider for internships where I work .... shit, would not even let them near a calculator ...

One prime example of MS ingenuity:

How does IE11 detect intranet sites ? You know, all the MS shops have these ie6 only intranets hanging around and ie 11 must support them ... so, guess how ie detects INTRANET sites ?

if (hostNamePartOfTheURL.indexOf(".") == -1)

{

//Yay! we have an intranet site!

enable(ie6Mode);

}

Never heard of private IP address ranges or MS shops that have the intranet server in their DNS and use something like intranet.company.local.

Seriously, IT IS THAT BAD!

[Hans 1]

Re: Interesting

...

It is possible to set an HTTP header to force ie11 to NOT USE CRAPPY TRIDENT, but it has to be the first header, otherwise, "ie is allowed to ignore it" (EXACT words from MS dev).

Sick, it is sick

Sincerely,

Hans 1

Microsoft MHP

Adobe MHP

Accenture MHP

[Updraft102]

"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."

There's that phrase again... "not supported." We keep seeing that in conjunction with Microsoft artificially sabotaging its users who aren't following the MS marketing plan. If you disregard Microsoft's admonitions that Windows 10 is the only version of Windows with the extra special technology Kaby and Ryzen need to work properly and discover that Windows 7 runs quite nicely on them anyway, you're in for a nasty surprise when Windows tells you it won't be downloading any updates because your CPU is "not supported."

So here's another thing that's "not supported," which appears to mean "if our customers try to do something that does not mesh with our marketing plan, we're going to sabotage them."

That's not what "not supported" means, Microsoft.

I think the people who are suggesting that this is a good place to apply Hanlon's Razor have forgotten this is Microsoft we are talking about. No matter what they do, it's best to assume it was done for reasons of malice until proven otherwise, and even then tuck the idea away in the back of your mind and revisit it periodically to see if there is something you missed when the "otherwise" was being proven. MS has given up any benefit of the doubt it may once have enjoyed; at this point, it is safer and more sensible to give them the burden of the doubt.

[Version 1.0]

More like a puppy

It looks adorable ... until you start to live with it. Then it eats the sofa and pees in your bed.

[davidp231]

And outlook.com still "runs" like a bag of shite on any browser and OS.

Quadrapalegic sloths get stuff done quicker.

[Phukov Andigh]

to be fair though

O365 runs like crap on many large Windows networks, especially in comparison to the more distributed Exchange networks we ran before.

Another true headline would be "O365 cripples pretty much EVERYONE".

[Dyspeptic Curmudgeon]

Razors Galore

Napoleon Bonaparte: Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.

Heinlein's Law :"Never ascribe to malice that which may be explained by stupidity."

Clarke's Law : "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Grey's Law :"Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice. "

Newbury's Corollary : "Any sufficiently advanced malice is indistinguishable from incompetence. "

In this case, I vote for my corollary.

[PTW]

And don't forget

This is the same OneDrive that MS routinely trawl through to see if you have anything you shouldn't.

Just in case. Just think of the children.

Why TF would you use it unless you're going through the added burden of using TrueCrypt/AxCrypt?

[Silviu C.]

Remember Opera bork edition?

Not the first time MS pulled some BS move.

https://www.cnet.com/news/opera-says-bork-to-msn-standards/

And by the way, despite it being reported as fixed, it was not for me. Onedrive became significantly faster just now after spoofing my UA to look like MS Edge on Windows.

[W. Anderson]

Serve thn right! - for trusting Mcrsoft with good UNIX/Linux interoperability

Those using Linux end user computing with Microsoft OneDrive really deserve no sympathey or reprieve form the treatment they receive from Microsoft.

Only really stupid people would even think that they get equal treatment in linking their Linux based devices to any Microsoft service. Apache HTTP Server evelopers and PhP core developers have repeatedly indicated that these particular technologies run much better on an all UNIX/Linux (NIX) base than on or linked to a Microsoft Windows foundation.

Even naive technology users trying Microsoft SQL Server on linux have gotter poor results.

The purpose is clear - Microsoft wants all non_Microsoft software users to ditch their wares and switch to an "all Microsoft" base, else suffer the consequences of terrible support of your NIX on Microsodt, who wilhave reportedly broken your non_Microsoft applications on purpose.

[W. Anderson]

Serve thn right! - for trusting Mcrsoft with good UNIX/Linux interoperability

Those using Linux end user computing with Microsoft OneDrive really deserve no sympathey or reprieve from the treatment they receive from Microsoft.

Only really stupid people would even think that they get equal treatment in linking their Linux based devices to any Microsoft service. Apache HTTP Server developers and PhP core developers have repeatedly indicated that these particular technologies run much better on an all UNIX/Linux (NIX) base than on or linked to a Microsoft Windows foundation.

Even naive technology users trying Microsoft SQL Server on Linux have gotter poor results.

The purpose is clear - Microsoft wants all non_Microsoft software users to ditch their wares and switch to an "all Microsoft" base, else suffer the consequences of terrible support of your NIX on Microsoft, who have reportedly broken non_Microsoft applications on purpose.

[Number6]

Re: Serve thn right! - for trusting Mcrsoft with good UNIX/Linux interoperability

I did wonder if the poor performance of the new LinkedIn website was due to an MS/Linux issue,but I think I've seen enough people complain about how dire it is that either there's a bug in the browser recognition code that screws everyone equally or it really is just awful.

[Dwarf]

Vote with your feet

If it doesn't work, then stop complaining and choose another product from one of the other cloudy vendors.

After all if they can't sort out the basics or are deliberately playing dirty, then go elsewhere and watch their market share continue to drop.

[Anonymous Coward]

OneDrive isn't the only thing MS does tricks with for linux

My recent purchase (after waiting almost 4 weeks for the motherboard) of a Ryzen 1700x based system I had the wonderful experience re-installing Windows 10. Now you would think that setting "Other OS" with legacy for all devices would set the system in legacy boot mode, nope not if you try to install windows before you install linux, you get the wonderful error "we couldn't create a new partition or locate an existing one." message. Even though I had booted initially with LiveUSB (ubuntu) partitioned everything correctly and the partition listing showed 500MB System (FAT), 180GB Primary (NTFS), 45GB Primary (EXT4) in the partition listing it would not work. If I wanted UEFI mode than sure it would work but then I couldn't install linux at all.

What allowed me to fix it was first install linux (same partition layout), then install windows which this time it didn't complain at all. Seem to know that grub was there and thought, this must be a mistake, let's remove this virus called grub. Then reboot into linux with LiveUSB and repair grub, BTW I didn't touch my BIOS settings and all is installed with MBR mode without issue... although I would recommend at the moment to use Arch (in my case Antergos) for the linux distro out-of-the-box since even ubuntu 17.04 didn't like the x370 chipset and AM4 Ryzen (only see's one thread and super laggy mouse).

[davidp231]

Re: OneDrive isn't the only thing MS does tricks with for linux

Secureboot-aware ones *should* play well with UEFI with the aforementioned option turned on (eg Ubuntu, OpenSUSE). Personally I don't bother with it so I can use an alternate EFI bootloader*, which needs faffing around to get signed so it plays nice with secure boot. Also, Windows EFI mode I believe requires a GPT partitioning scheme over the traditional MBR method or it refuses to play ball.

*rEFInd is the one in question - gives you a loader more akin to what Macs have and it autodetects removable media as well. I use it to boot Linux direct without having grub as an intermediary. I've got it set to boot Win10 (edu edition), LMDE2, and the recent Fedora and OpenSUSE releases.

[Stu 18]

works about the same I would say

Tried onedrive for about a year. It couldn't sync 100 GB of files in the whole year we had it operational on a Win 8.1 machine, in NZ on 30Mb/s / 10Mb/s fibre internet connection.

Went back to dropbox, sync completed in the afternoon.

Don't know if it is because outside US land the service is worse, but I'd call it un-useable here.

Almost like this editor because of the ad refreshes.

[Kiwi]

Re: works about the same I would say

Almost like this editor because of the ad refreshes.

Ah, glad to hear it. Was wondering if it was something with my end!

[Number6]

My solution is not to use OneDrive. I'm stuck with a Windows 10 laptop but I never set that bit up, plus I'm typing in a browser window on a Linux VM installed on the machine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is being super lazy

"What's likely happening here is that Microsoft is being super lazy and checking the user-agent string to see which version of its code it should serve to the browser"

No, really (sarcasm), the only lazyness is in using the agent string to detect the browser and so make running any otrher browser a jolting experience.

“We will bind the shell to Explorer, so that running any other browser is a jolting experience.”, Ben Slivka

“In one piece of mail people were suggesting that Office had to work equally well with all browsers and that we shouldn’t force Office users to use our browser. This Is wrong and I wanted to correct this.”, billg

MSN deliberately breaks Opera's browser, claims company

[Mikel]

I hope they don't fix it

If you use their shoddy product you deserve what you get

[lsrusty]

Linux version of Windows 10 and Windows Server? When?

I wonder how long it will take before Microsoft windows will be launched on a new underlying architecture based on Linux?

[Bucky 2]

Netflix too

I used to watch Netflix with Firefox and Pipelight. It was pretty much the same deal. Rather than identifying what your browser could or could not do introspectively, it just gave you the "unsupported" page unless you changed your user agent string.

[nilfs2]

It is fixed now

That issue was bugging me for a long time, I have to use O365 at work and my laptop is running good 'ol Debian + Chrome, as usual we penguinistas are always placed last on MS list of priorities, just like they are doing with Skype now, it used to be a great piece of Linux software, now it is stuck on the eternal beta stage as an excuse to never fix it.