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A comment on Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-agent (2016). Parent comment

Re:Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-... by kbenson on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @03:19PM (#13933867)
I think that's another case of assuming bad intentions. Once Microsoft had a slightly differently behaving version of JavaScript that was in use by hundreds of millions of people, including many enterprise environments with internally developed and bought solutions that required Internet Explorer and it's version of JS and ActiveX to function who more often than not were also large Microsoft customers, the idea of breaking all the existing functionality just to be compliant with a standard becomes a non-starter. Were there people in the company that liked this situation? Probably. That doesn't mean it had to come about through malice. It's easy to see how a similar situation with Chrome or Safari could occur if they had greater than 90% of market share.

The only reason we are where we are today is because there's much less of a single dominant player in the browser space, so using standards are incentivized.

P.S. Yes, MS got their market share through shipping the browser with the OS. While it may have led to a monopoly in the browser space (or close to a monopoly, depending on how you want to look at it), I think it's hard to say any one of us wouldn't have made the same decision to bundle them were we in the position of selling the OS and also putting out a browser.

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Re:Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-... by mamon on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @03:28PM (#13933971)
For one, every Linux distribution comes with either Firefox or Chromium preinstalled. Is that monopolistic behaviour? Should EU require Linux developer to provide "Choose your web browser" wizard popping up on every new Linux install, similar way it is on Windows?
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Re:Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-... by dragonwriter on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @03:35PM (#13934035)
Microsoft's​ behavior was illegal not because of bundling alone, but because of bundling a product (IE) in a different market with a product which was a monopoly (Windows) in what was held to be (based on additional Al evidence beyond mere bundling) an attempt to leverage a monopoly in one market to monopolize a different market.

So, no, it's not like any Linux distribution bundling a third-party browser like Firefox or Chromium, since none of those distributions have a monopoly to leverage to start with.

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Re:Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-... by sah2ed on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @04:32PM (#13934611)
Honest question: if Microsoft didn't bundle IE and the user hadn't received a copy of those ubiquitous AOL CD-ROMs which came in the mail/magazines (and sometimes carried the Netscape Navigator installer), how is the user expected to consume content on the web without a web browser?

Surely, you'll at least need a decent web browser to get online to download a different browser of your choice, no?

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Re:Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-... by dragonwriter on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @05:27PM (#13935156)
> if Microsoft didn't bundle IE and the user hadn't received a copy of those ubiquitous AOL CD-ROMs which came in the mail/magazines (and sometimes carried the Netscape Navigator installer), how is the user expected to consume content on the web without a web browser?

Go to store, by a CD with browser, install. The age when boxed software was a major thing extended past the point when IE started bundling IE.

Of course, with a TCP/IP stack you can get software from the internet a lot of ways without a web browser, too. FTP was a thing, after all.

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Re:Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-... by kamjam on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @09:15PM (#13936690)
As a user who has just bought their first computer, would you a) like to go to the shop and spend money to buy more software b) try to figure out this thing called FTP, maybe going to the library to read up on it even though you have never heard of it so don't know what you are looking for c) just use this thing called "Internet Explorer" that sounds like what you want to do, is free and already installed on the computer you just turned on for the first time?
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Re:Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-... by dragonwriter on Thursday March 23, 2017 @02:03AM (#13937681)
Before, and for several years after, Microsoft started bundling IE, many, perhaps most, ISPs (dialup and what passed for "broadband" at the time) typically delivered software CDs that you were expected to install with their own software (often including their preferred web browser, preconfigured with their preferred start page and other settings.)

If you just bought your first computer at that time, you weren't likely to have internet service to connect it to until you bought that separately, and when you did, you would have software, too.

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Re:Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-... by kbenson on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @09:43PM (#13936805)
Keep in mind, many people with a computer might not have the internet at all during this period. Purchasing internet service usually came with software to use it.
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Re:Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-... by spinlock on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @09:41PM (#13936794)
You're talking about an era when Gopher was still the dominant protocol on the internet.
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Re:Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-... by kalleboo on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @11:53PM (#13937278)
Every ISP I used in the 90's sent a floppy or CD-ROM with a setup guide, web browser and some other shareware internet tools (FTP clients, Stuffit Expander on the Mac, etc)
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Re:Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-... by pjc50 on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @05:18PM (#13935074)
There was a time when people bought software in boxes.
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Re:Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-... by knicholes on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @11:25AM (#13977376)
When I was a kid (before the publicly-used version of the Internet that we know and love today) and wanted to download software, I'd log into a BBS for my download.
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Re:Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-... by sah2ed on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @12:07PM (#13977786)
Thanks for adding your perspective to the discussion though I'd argue that your experience might not have been representative of the larger population.
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Re:Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-... by mohaine on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @05:26PM (#13935139)
There is no need for a browser to download something from the internet. You only need the browser to browse the internet. (hence the name) A simple UI with a list of options was all that was needed.
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Re:Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-... by spinlock on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @09:41PM (#13936798)
The web is not the internet
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Re:Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-... by smhenderson on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @04:16PM (#13934451)
Not every Linux distribution "comes with" Firefox or Chromium. They may be an option on the install disk and may even be part of the default install but they do not have to be installed and there are other choices (e.g. I typically install SeaMonkey because I like the mail client it comes with). In fact I can decide to install Linux on a PC and not install a browser at all. Last I checked it's still hard/impossible to remove IE/Edge from Windows. [1]

[1] Although admittedly the last real work I did in Windows was 7, so please correct me if the situation has changed.

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Re:Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-... by gurkendoktor on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @07:36PM (#13936118)
You can remove IE in Windows 7: http://lifehacker.com/5164286/windows-7-lets-you-finally-uni...

I'm pretty sure I've seen the dialog in Windows 10 as well, but not for Edge, which I find even worse than IE.

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Re:Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-... by nkristoffersen on Thursday March 23, 2017 @02:15AM (#13937720)
If you were a web developer you'd be happy to know Edge is so much better at complying with web standards than IE ever was. Would love to know what people miss about IE.

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/platfor...

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Re:Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-... by __jal on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @05:09PM (#13934985)
If you're not just repeating an ancient talking point and actually don't understand this, it would be well worth spending some time on Wikipedia coming up to speed on the goals of antitrust enforcement.

The short version is that the actions of a non-monopolist are looked at very differently than the actions of a monopolist.

Additionally, you're dead wrong about "every Linux distribution", and even if you weren't, the fact that there are many of them would moot an antitrust argument.

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Re:Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-... by Veedrac on Wednesday March 22, 2017 @03:58PM (#13934267)
> every Linux distribution comes with either Firefox or Chromium preinstalled

False. See, for instance, Arch.

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