Kudos for fixing the issue. I do question whether it was originally tested throughly on Linux in the first place, otherwise it's hard to see how such a major bug could have crept in.
It seems like a bad idea to check for capabilities by parsing user agent string anyway - I though we all figured that out about 20 years ago? JavaScript allows web page to check for capabilities on-the-fly, so there really is no excuse for whitelists.
Anyone can make a mistake, the real test is whether they change their ways to be less error prone. (With proper testing of Linux platforms too)
But if you still insist you need it, I don't think detection should be that difficult. When user comes to the page for the first time you put a hidden link somewhere with prefetch turned on. Then you ask server if the page has been accessed. And because you only make this check once (for instance on login page while the user is typing) it is performant enough.
Is it easier to whitelist? Sure. But we have seen here how reliable whitelisting is.
Unfortunately not all of us have that option. I'm currently trying to figure out an issue with TFS which means I can't do anything with a PR once it's been raised if I use a browser in Linux. After seeing this thread I think I'll be switching the user agent and see if that fixes it.
In theory yes. But for some cases it's just not realistic to do feature-detection, and then you move on to the second best option you have.
I'm pretty sure we'll have user-agent related bugs for quite a time to come.
No, wasting time for two open minded users instead of working for 99,999% users is inexcusable.
1. There are probably more IE7 users hitting OneDrive than Linux users of all distros combined. Should the fact that there are some users of a platform obligate MS to support it?
2. If you're running Linux on the desktop, you've made a decision to eschew all the major commercial software/OS vendors (particularly Microsoft and Apple). Why should you then expect Microsoft to bend over backwards to support your idiosyncracy? Why do you care?
I run OpenBSD on my desktop. I can't run Microsoft stuff. Even Outlook Web won't load unless I spoof my user agent. I don't care.
The percentage between $PLATFORM users generally and $PLATFORM users using your product may or may be not correlated. It may happen, that then first percentage will rise but the second will not - you are making it difficult for them, so why bother - and you will miss it.
You might fix the software later, but that's the easy part. The more difficult part is to fix your reputation and users habits. They already have opinion of you and found alternatives that work for them. The Thank you, I go back to Google Apps suite. response is a perfect example of this.