14 DAY TRIAL // Last week, we reported that Linux users were complaining about a bug that made OneDrive super-slow on pretty much any distribution, even though using the same connection on a Windows system experienced no difficulties whatsoever.
A Microsoft spokesperson told us the same day that it was all just a bug that was already fixed, and now a company engineer explained what exactly went wrong on Linux and why performance was impacted on these systems and not on Windows.
“We’re not trying to favor our own OS”
Posting on Hacker News, Edgar from the OneDrive team says it loud and clear that the performance issue was not in any way intentional, but only “an oversight.” There were many users out there who rushed to blame Microsoft for the bug, saying that it was all happening because the software giant hates Linux and sees it as one of its fiercest rivals in the OS market.
“We identified that StaticLoad.aspx, a page that prefetches resources in the background for Office online apps was using the link prefetching browser mechanism only for certain platforms (iOS, Chrome OS, Mac, Windows), but for Linux it was falling back to a less efficient technique that was causing the issue,” the Microsoft engineer says.
In a follow-up post, Edgar emphasizes this was not intentional, promising more thorough testing on Linux systems in the future.
“Again, this was not intentional. We will definitely ensure that more Linux testing is done! Our goal in OneDrive is to build a service that enables as many people as possible to be productive, so if in cases it looks like we are trying to favor our own OS, that is not really our intention,” he said.
At this point, OneDrive should work correctly for users on Linux too and no issues should be experienced anymore, so the same performance should be provided to everyone regardless of the platform.