14 DAY TRIAL // Linux systems are said to be experiencing some performance issues when connecting to Microsoft’s OneDrive in the browser, with users complaining that browsing folders and working on documents are super-slow as compared to doing the same things on Windows.
Linux users discussing in a reddit thread seem to point that this is a widespread issue affecting the majority of distros, even though everything seems to be running correctly in Windows where no performance issues are experienced whatsoever.
Changing the user agent string in the browser appears to fix the issue, with OneDrive working smoothly on Linux after that, though returning to the default configuration makes the service load slowly once again.
“After changing the user-agent the performance problems were resolved. The UI of OneDrive worked flawlessly. The only thing in the user-agent changed was the OS. At first I thought this was a random occurance but no. I changed back to the normal user-agent and the problem came back,” user Torrenator explains.
Just a bug?
Without a doubt, the hardcore Linux users would be tempted to believe that Microsoft is doing this on purpose, making OneDrive a nightmare on rival operating systems. And yet, this all appears to be just a bug impacting OneDrive, as user angellus explains in a post after running a little experiment.
“This is certainly a bug. It is not a targeted attacked against Linux users. Report it to Microsoft,” he says in his message.
“Microsoft is just doing really s****y feature detection using User Agent strings instead of, well actual feature detection. I was able to reproduce the same result by setting my User Agent to Firefox 52 on Windows 98. If I set it to a ‘more realistic’ user agent like IE 7 on Windows XP, it would actually redirect me to a busted page to upgrade my browser instead of Word Online. It appears if Microsoft cannot figure out your User Agent (including your OS as part of it), it gives you a busted experience.”
If this is indeed a bug, there’s a good chance that Microsoft is already aware of it given the big number of complaints, but we’ve contacted the company to ask for more info and will update the article when an answer is provided.
UPDATE: Microsoft confirmed it was all just a bug and provided a fix, with similar performance now supposed to be experienced on both Windows and Linux.