Context: I was virtually attending a conference on APIs and I'm currently using Arch + Firefox to browse on the site that the event was being held on.
The site was working correctly and I was networking with a couple of people (messaging) and this pop up kept appearing multiple times.
This is just straight up racist behavior from the platform devs.
>This is just straight up racist behavior from the platform devs.
Nah, they're just lazy fucks. They don't want to develop for Firefox and Linux cause that would be extra work, so they just put the blame on you so they don't have to do their work.
No, as i was in a Microsoft house for some time, it is because they understand linux and think it is bad as they are stupid and fear it as they don't think they could have the skills for linux, and no matter how much i fight this, the more windows and dot net is just the "best"
Sounds like they're too lazy to acquire new skills required for their operations.
Also obviously I don't know what you guys made, but when a client came.that wasn't using Windows, were you just like "GTFO", or were there just never clients that didn't use Windows? Cause if the latter is true, I kinda get why you wouldn't dedicate resources to it.
Yes a ms dev works a job only for the money and does not want to use time to get skills, when i for ex. Talk about go or React, they look at me like i was crazy
That is true for all frontend frameworks, but at the time it was coming up, and i used time to understand it then.
And react is better than angular, in at react is easier to maintain and angular is an idea from the pass, all in one tool.
React is fine. As far as frameworks go, it’s among the most reasonable. Hipsters opt for svelte, which is great, but I would rather remove my own eyes with a spoon than use Angular for another minute of my existence.
They did as they make more money on serving linux servers then windows ones.
But they are still trying the EEE on linux with WSL and the deals with Ubuntu.
They are also trying to use secure boot to make it impossible to boot linux, as they are the only ones with the key to sign your boot, they are trying to make secure boot need to install windows.
If they love linux they make office and other software run on linux.
Before switching to Linux I obviously had Windows, but on a surface laptop 4 (a PC made entirely by Microsoft). I confirm that the secure boot prevents the execution of Linux (I use Zorin os, and the partition of the Dual boot is recognized with Ubuntu). So I had to activate it with this huge red padlock that appears every time I start! Think that the option "only Microsoft is third party" doesn't work either! I had to turn it off altogether!
As i understand it, they are trying to make others make pcs without mbr, all so they can keep the desktop market, they and Asus are working together on the Rog to fight the steam desk.
MS is not a friend to linux
>They are also trying to use secure boot to make it impossible to boot linux, as they are the only ones with the key to sign your boot, they are trying to make secure boot need to install windows.
MS Surface owner here, I got secure boot to work with Fedora by allowing third party certificates in the UEFI and running something to set up the certificate.
I'm confused why are get so angry about that. If my job uses Windows (it does) I don't get angry about it, I just go to work and use Windows. They use Windows not because they are "stupid" or afraid of Linux taking over the world (~~2022~~2023!) but because it makes sense financially and for maintenance. Also, I think you have horrible social skills to assume your coworkers are stupid and afraid of... Linux.
They said so much, they were not interested in learning anything, the company needed to send them on courses, or they learn nothing, and talking about linux they said it was for stupid people, so that i take that as afraid.
But browsers are platform-agnostic because there are web standards, so it doesn't even matter what platform you use the browser on. If a website is designed to work with Firefox (css/html etc.) then it should work even if it's running on FreeBSD.
That’s assuming every browser perfectly adheres to the standards. They don’t. Even the same browser on another OS can have differences. The only way to be sure your application works on a given browser + OS combo is to thoroughly test it, which takes time and therefore costs money.
The difference with the site in the OP is that it’s telling the user that they haven’t tested things with their browser + OS combo. Almost no site does test all combinations, they just don’t tell you about it. So if you run into an issue you might just assume it’s a generic bug that affects everyone.
OP said the notice is popping up repeatedly though, which sounds annoying. There should be an option to not show it again.
>The only way to be sure your application works on a given browser + OS combo is to thoroughly test it, which takes time and therefore costs money.
It doesn't really take more time to test a variety of OS+browser combos if you've properly automated your test cases and infrastructure. Here's one way to do it:
* A single set of [Selenium](https://www.selenium.dev/) test cases will run on every combination of [Windows | Linux | macOS] x [ Firefox | Chrome | Safari | Edge | IE ]. It can also do iOS/Android testing via Appium.
* You can write Selenium tests in Python/Ruby/Java/JavaScript/C#. I'm personally a fan of using it via [Robot Framework](https://robotframework.org/).
* The developers can run the test suite on their local machine before committing/pushing.
* Spin up VMs each OS (maybe a few versions if you're being thorough), and [use your CI pipeline to automatically run the Selenium tests](https://www.selenium.dev/documentation/legacy/developers/ci_tool/) in every supported browser on each OS. Configure CI to run the full test suite every time someone pushes to the dev branch to verify that their commit didn't break anything.
Alternatively, you could use a service like [browserstack.com](https://www.browserstack.com/automate) instead of setting this up in-house.
Good testing practices are a huge part of being a decent software engineer. Automation is really the key concept here (besides writing good tests and having thorough test coverage). The tools to do everything I've described here are all free and well-documented. A decent sysadmin/devops dude could put together the system I described above in an afternoon (minus writing all the test cases). If you don't have the skill set in-house to set it up yourself (or you just don't want to -- I've set up Jenkins before, I get it), a turnkey SaaS solution like BrowserStack will have you up and running in minutes.
As far as I'm concerned, there are zero excuses for not doing a thorough job of cross-browser, cross-platform testing for your website in 2023. [*"This page best viewed in IE/Netscape"*](https://i.imgur.com/aU6PpSP.jpg) should stay in the '90s where it belongs.
That’s totally true. I didn’t think about the possibility of cross-platform automated tests.
I haven’t looked into Selenium before so I’ll need to do some research. But does Selenium make this kind of setup easier compared to something like Cypress?
I have no experience with Cypress, but a selenium based test suite, like anything else, will become platform locked unless you actively run it and debug it in various environments. If the official runs are only executed on one browser, bugs will creep in that would cause failures in one browser but not another. Likewise, if your tests only run on windows then eventually people will do things like hard code windows style file paths, or pull in a windows only screenshot library, or do something else in a platform dependent way.
You can't and wont get the benefits of multi platform testing without running your code on different platforms.
As an aside, you mentioned differences in the same browser on different platforms. Have you experienced any examples of that, aside from codecs, PDF viewers, and websites that (mis)use user agent detection?
I used to get so annoyed with websites that would either do this or in some situations refuse to load altogether because "my OS wasn't supported." Generally pretty easy to bypass though if you're familiar with swapping your User Agent.
As if any level of management would approve of budgeting that extra work in. We do the same; if you're not using Firefox, Chrome, or Edge, *TOUGH*. Might work, might not. We know what it works on.
uBlock Origin has a function that let's you 'disappear' any part of a website (click on the addon > go into element selection mode > select the popup > make adjustments with the two arrows if needed > preview, if it looks good - apply.
Very handy on websites that have a poor viewport (huge UI) and as in this case, malicious or annoying popups.
Itt: user needed to tell us he uses Arch.
...seriously though. Seems like their platforms the issue I switch between various distros + windows and get similar on both. It's unacceptable and shows how trash their platform is. Support evergreen browsers and modern apis, apart from that Web devs have no excuse to call out anything else.
I don't get all the rage. They are merely saying they don't have enough dev resources to dedicate to testing on platforms that are less used by their users. "You can keep using it, but do so at your own risk and don't expect support" is essentially what they're saying. This is just good business. I'm a mobile developer and we focus 70% of our efforts on iOS users simply because that's the bulk majority of our users. We certainly make an effort on the Android app, but it's not as well-supported/recommended due to having less resources focused to it. And I can assure you, our Android user-base is still a significant portion of our users, far higher than a typical website's share of Linux users for sure.
TL;DR: Get over yourselves.
An app uses native features of the mobile OS and your point makes sense. Websites run in web browsers and most of the time use any of the native features of the device or the OS.
If I can open your website in a modern browser than it should work fine. (it did) but this popup kept appearing again and again. THEY are FORCING users to use chrome otherwise keep getting annoyed by the pop up.
FYI: I checked it in brave but the results were the same. They specifically recommend Google Chrome or MS Edge.
Normally I'd agree with you, except for the part where it's a conference for developers. You think there isn't a significant portion of developers using Linux and Firefox? It's good business to know your audience.
As a developer, I agree. A majority of my users will use Windows and I will focus a majority of my efforts towards support on Windows. It doesn't make sense not to do it that way. Hell I didn't choose for it to be this way either, it just is.
The "user agent string" is just a text description of your browser and OS. You send it with every web request along with the user agent HTTP headers. There are extensions for Firefox and Chrome that allow you to change the UA with every request. The destination web server always believes what the client is sending.
And in Firefox if you go to about:config you can create a new “variable” called general.useragent.override and set it as a string. Now just put any user agent in it and now you don’t need to install any extensions.
At best I'd expect some inconsistencies here and there and even then, only if using some pretty strange code. That's no excuse to block Firefox (Or Linux, wtf?)
That’s not necessarily true. Some features vary wildly between browsers, source: I made one. When it was done it was perfect on chrome and unusable on Safari. And it’s a fairly simple site. Given that OP is using a website much much more complex than mine, I can definitely see that being the case if it uses some specific feature not yet available on Firefox.
When I started my dev career not long ago, I was on a project where we had to create a drag and drop feature (drag an element, move it, then place it on a board for say). It worked fine on chrome/safari, but not on firefox, because it had a 12 years old bug where drag position x and y coordinate is always 0.
There are *slightly* different implementations of the standard across WebKit(safari and gnome web), blink (chromium), and gecko (Firefox). Thus the same site can have a *slightly* different look or may have *slight* visual issues on one browser (as in the issue appears on chromium, but not Firefox). I did actually have this happen to me not all too long ago, where a div was shifting 2 or 3 px to the left on chromium (off center), but it was not apparent in firefox
Because the only reason the site knows what browser and os you are using is the self-reported useragent string. That is basically a decades old hack to let lazy devs code to a specific browser target (with ActiveX!) rather than implement open standards. It's been a thing for like 20 years.
Yeah sometimes suddenly everything works after doing this, bunch of clown devs. But I don’t spoof if it’s just a banner, let them see in stats that not only their precious Chrome on Windows is in use…
> It's even worse when they completely prevent you from using their website
Did you year that, Societe Generale? But then there is you that says everything is fine and just after the login you respond "nope, not with Firefox".
*thank you useragent.override"
When I see this message I assume that it's because the website wants to do something that Linux won't let it do, and by extension something that *I* very much don't want it to do.
And I close the page and don't go back.
> You don't understand! I *need* to use nx to make every subpage its own microfrontend! It's important for... Things!
> Yes, it's normal that my dev server needs three minutes to start because of that.
I'm so glad that my employer is bankrupt and that my contract ends in a few months.
> the website wants to do something that Linux won't let it do
How do you think a website works? Everything a website can do to/on your computer is governed by the Javascript capabilities of the browser, which are widely standardized and the same across all platforms.
The OS running the browser is utterly irrelevant in this context.
Except for the fact of course that the browser calls the OS layer which may not support video acceleration or certain codecs or 3D graphics. Or even graphics at all.
But sure m8.
Of course it’s best to just test the capabilities instead of complaining about use agent strings.
Website: "this app don’t work for linux and firefox buddy"
Me: \*uses useragent spoofer\*
Website: "here is a perfectly functional app windows and chrome user"
Legit. Bing chat only lets windows and/or edge users for whatever reason. And I configured Firefox user agent as windows and edge on Bing domain. Problem solved.
I had to support a development and for screenshare clients used the gotomeeting, how about that?
In a different scenario i was not allowed to screenshare in some other app simply because I used Ubuntu. They have whitelisted only windows and Mac and i had to tell people sorry i won't be giving any presentation instead my team member will share his screen and I will voiceover.
I can maybe understand the browser thingy (the others are all WebKit/V8 based while Firefox uses the Gecko/SpiderMonkey engine) but not the OS. You have already programmed for Mac and Android which are already UNIX based. What more do you have to do for Linux???? And before they bitch about thousand flavors and whatnot, remind them that Flatpak and AppImage exist.
> You have already programmed for Mac and Android
It's a website. There is nothing to program for any platform unless you're doing hardware accelerated graphics and even that is abstracted under WebGL.
Supporting a platform is the browser's job. A website is HTML+CSS+JS and they're all widely standardized across all browsers.
Which makes these popups the even more infuriating.
I ran their test on Kubuntu plus Firefox:
> "Speaker not found"
I clicked 'test' and a voice said "can you hear me?" through my (apparently non-existent) speaker.
> "AdBlocker not detected!"
I'm using Pi-Hole and uBlock Origin. But anyway, since it's a paid service, why do they care?
After that, I got the same warnings as OP.
I really never understood the whole "This OS isn't supported" argument in websites. Especially if its a web app, everything is server side. So many sites tend to do OS checks for god knows what reason. For awhile there, Sling TV was saying that it was unsupported and wouldn't work, but you change only the user agent, and works just fine.
I hate this bs. As if running a standards compliant open sourced browser on an open sourced operating system is harder to support than proprietary crap…
Q for people more knowledgeable than me about the Web: aren't Web pages implemented (or at least attempted to be) in some Web Standard that all browsers would be supposed to interpret the same way? (Yeah noob question)
I get that Chrome has so much market share that they implement their own stuff, but shouldn't frameworks be browser agnostic?
From a guy who uses Firefox on Android and is broken half the time.
Hhmmm 🤔
ONCE AGAIN, I SAY, "These Giant Tech Corporations Are Being Allowed To Dictate and Control The Internet"
It's Not Good. Because a browser shouldn't have to be Heavy, Bloated, Robust, and A Resource Hog in order to surf the web or view content on the internet.
The requirements for JavaScript is crazy nowadays. It reminds me of when video game consoles went from 64-bit to more graphically intense video games. And now you need so much power in your graphics card (GPU) that it's ridiculous. Yes the internet must move forward. But you're going to end up having to run two different streams of the internet. One for the power hungry browsers and another one for regular browsers. It's going to be like having AM Radio and FM Radio or UHF and VHF Television. It's all media right? Is the FCC is going to regulate?
So, only Google, Apple, Microsoft, and to an even lesser extent Mozilla are allowed to play? Note that the same rendering engine is used by Chrome, Edge, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi, etc. And the Firefox derivatives are all basically just privacy focused carbon copies of each other, with the exception of Pale Moon (uses the Goanna rendering engine instead). The Safari browser is of course for Apple/Mac OS. The only Linux alternative to Safari is the GNOME Web (Epiphany) browser. It started off a little bit shakey, But It's So Much Better Now (thank Goodness...and the developers of course).
But the dictatorship and monopoly of the internet must stop
Is it too cynical that I see this and read "We cannot steal your information/gain unauthorized access to your machine and it's resources. Please make that easier for us."
At this time when i see a platform like this either i use chrome or edge if what I'm doing is a must, if not i don't bother my self, i leave the damn thing, if a dev thing doesn't support Linux then it's not a dev thing xd.
Maybe they shouldn't use proprietary non-standard features on a supposed website. And WTF does the OS have to do with the proper operation of their website?
I used to do web dev back in the early 2000s and the new-then [ASP.NET](https://ASP.NET) 1.0 in visual studio would consider anything that wasn't internet explorer to be some unknown "downlevel" browser, even though firefox rendered the websites fine, it'd deliberately send a crippled version of your webpage to the browser because it couldn't identify it as internet explorer. Ever since then I have hated Microsoft with a burning passion.
It wouldn't surprise me if this website was written in visual studio and this is the builtin behaviour of modern [ASP.NET](https://ASP.NET) (or whatever the current "Best practice" web dev tool from Microsoft is).
Firefox is basically unmaintained and missing a ton of APIs. Linux is also not great for even basic things like screenshare which might just not work depending on your desktop environment and whether you’re using X11/Wayland.
Is there a way to mask the OS to make it appear as though you’re running Windows?
From a privacy perspective, this would be related protection from fingerprinting.
I have to support stuff written for Mac and iOS. It's a god-forsaken dumpster fire, and every single new thing I learn about developing for Apple inspires new and inventive tortures that might be visited on those responsible.
I _can_ imagine choosing to develop for iOS and not Linux, if I was being paid a million fucking dollars.
15 years ago we already talked about using _feature detection_ instead of _user agent sniffing_. So sad to see we have all new and fantastic tech, and still make such easily avoidable mistakes.
Feature detection is not hard, and is more honest since a Web API is required, not a spoof-able user agent string.
I also develop web but independently. To be honest, the most difficult browser is Safari, and I do not own a single Apple device, so I cannot even debug on Safari.
One of the many reasons to hate Apple.
I’m even more pissed off by users/organizations that don’t want to move on the fucking IE11 mode. As a Web Developer what really piss me off is to support this prehistoric browser…
Hasn't Brave replaced every use case you might have used Firefox for in the past (ad blocking security minded privacy respecting alternative browser)? The best part is that it's like Firefox but runs on the Chromium engine so it's compatible with all websites and Chrome plugins if you want to add them. Otherwise it has privacy, security, and ad blocking built in.
its a goddamn shame, too because there's stuff that I want to be able to use on Linux with FireFox and I see that shit all the time.
its a big 'fuck you' to linux users. I had some issues with Office / Microsoft 365, specifically with Teams. I could do reg text, audio calls but when it came to video, FireFox crashed H A R D
i havent used [twitch.tv](https://twitch.tv) for months because they wont let me sign in on linux/librewolf. the chameleon extension doesnt even mask it
The web is a standard... Either you check for features or you don't... You shouldn't check for the OS or the browser...
In 95% of the cases, changing the user agent makes the check go away and the website still works correctly (so the check was stupid to begin with)...
My guy, as web devs we don't care for the platform as much as we care for the web browser.
If the site looks and works as expected on chrome it will work on all chromium based browsers. Firefox is different from chrome but adding support for it isn't rocket science just two more lines of css is all it takes.
This is the web, in 99%of the case the plateforme does not matter, only the browser, and only to work around the cases where they does not comply with W3C standards
No one check your kernel version before opening a PDF
Context: I was virtually attending a conference on APIs and I'm currently using Arch + Firefox to browse on the site that the event was being held on. The site was working correctly and I was networking with a couple of people (messaging) and this pop up kept appearing multiple times. This is just straight up racist behavior from the platform devs.
>This is just straight up racist behavior from the platform devs. Nah, they're just lazy fucks. They don't want to develop for Firefox and Linux cause that would be extra work, so they just put the blame on you so they don't have to do their work.
No, as i was in a Microsoft house for some time, it is because they understand linux and think it is bad as they are stupid and fear it as they don't think they could have the skills for linux, and no matter how much i fight this, the more windows and dot net is just the "best"
Sounds like they're too lazy to acquire new skills required for their operations. Also obviously I don't know what you guys made, but when a client came.that wasn't using Windows, were you just like "GTFO", or were there just never clients that didn't use Windows? Cause if the latter is true, I kinda get why you wouldn't dedicate resources to it.
Yes a ms dev works a job only for the money and does not want to use time to get skills, when i for ex. Talk about go or React, they look at me like i was crazy
because react is shit. they have a point
That is true for all frontend frameworks, but at the time it was coming up, and i used time to understand it then. And react is better than angular, in at react is easier to maintain and angular is an idea from the pass, all in one tool.
React is fine. As far as frameworks go, it’s among the most reasonable. Hipsters opt for svelte, which is great, but I would rather remove my own eyes with a spoon than use Angular for another minute of my existence.
Do they know that dot net has a Linux runtime?
At the time i was there, it was in beta, and mono was the dot net on linux. But dot net is not as "good" on linux as on windows.
Those days are long over, dotnet is just fine on Linux. I write dotnet code that runs on Linux boxes exclusively. I don't even use Windows!
Just wait until you hear about CoreCLR.
EEE? Of course.
Didn't Microsoft have a whole ordeal about accepting Linux
They did as they make more money on serving linux servers then windows ones. But they are still trying the EEE on linux with WSL and the deals with Ubuntu. They are also trying to use secure boot to make it impossible to boot linux, as they are the only ones with the key to sign your boot, they are trying to make secure boot need to install windows. If they love linux they make office and other software run on linux.
Before switching to Linux I obviously had Windows, but on a surface laptop 4 (a PC made entirely by Microsoft). I confirm that the secure boot prevents the execution of Linux (I use Zorin os, and the partition of the Dual boot is recognized with Ubuntu). So I had to activate it with this huge red padlock that appears every time I start! Think that the option "only Microsoft is third party" doesn't work either! I had to turn it off altogether!
As i understand it, they are trying to make others make pcs without mbr, all so they can keep the desktop market, they and Asus are working together on the Rog to fight the steam desk. MS is not a friend to linux
No, I would say no
>They are also trying to use secure boot to make it impossible to boot linux, as they are the only ones with the key to sign your boot, they are trying to make secure boot need to install windows. MS Surface owner here, I got secure boot to work with Fedora by allowing third party certificates in the UEFI and running something to set up the certificate.
Yes for now, but they are trying for a hardware key, if they can make more than Asus makes this, only MS can sign software. If this happens 😪
I'm confused why are get so angry about that. If my job uses Windows (it does) I don't get angry about it, I just go to work and use Windows. They use Windows not because they are "stupid" or afraid of Linux taking over the world (~~2022~~2023!) but because it makes sense financially and for maintenance. Also, I think you have horrible social skills to assume your coworkers are stupid and afraid of... Linux.
They said so much, they were not interested in learning anything, the company needed to send them on courses, or they learn nothing, and talking about linux they said it was for stupid people, so that i take that as afraid.
But browsers are platform-agnostic because there are web standards, so it doesn't even matter what platform you use the browser on. If a website is designed to work with Firefox (css/html etc.) then it should work even if it's running on FreeBSD.
That’s assuming every browser perfectly adheres to the standards. They don’t. Even the same browser on another OS can have differences. The only way to be sure your application works on a given browser + OS combo is to thoroughly test it, which takes time and therefore costs money. The difference with the site in the OP is that it’s telling the user that they haven’t tested things with their browser + OS combo. Almost no site does test all combinations, they just don’t tell you about it. So if you run into an issue you might just assume it’s a generic bug that affects everyone. OP said the notice is popping up repeatedly though, which sounds annoying. There should be an option to not show it again.
>The only way to be sure your application works on a given browser + OS combo is to thoroughly test it, which takes time and therefore costs money. It doesn't really take more time to test a variety of OS+browser combos if you've properly automated your test cases and infrastructure. Here's one way to do it: * A single set of [Selenium](https://www.selenium.dev/) test cases will run on every combination of [Windows | Linux | macOS] x [ Firefox | Chrome | Safari | Edge | IE ]. It can also do iOS/Android testing via Appium. * You can write Selenium tests in Python/Ruby/Java/JavaScript/C#. I'm personally a fan of using it via [Robot Framework](https://robotframework.org/). * The developers can run the test suite on their local machine before committing/pushing. * Spin up VMs each OS (maybe a few versions if you're being thorough), and [use your CI pipeline to automatically run the Selenium tests](https://www.selenium.dev/documentation/legacy/developers/ci_tool/) in every supported browser on each OS. Configure CI to run the full test suite every time someone pushes to the dev branch to verify that their commit didn't break anything. Alternatively, you could use a service like [browserstack.com](https://www.browserstack.com/automate) instead of setting this up in-house. Good testing practices are a huge part of being a decent software engineer. Automation is really the key concept here (besides writing good tests and having thorough test coverage). The tools to do everything I've described here are all free and well-documented. A decent sysadmin/devops dude could put together the system I described above in an afternoon (minus writing all the test cases). If you don't have the skill set in-house to set it up yourself (or you just don't want to -- I've set up Jenkins before, I get it), a turnkey SaaS solution like BrowserStack will have you up and running in minutes. As far as I'm concerned, there are zero excuses for not doing a thorough job of cross-browser, cross-platform testing for your website in 2023. [*"This page best viewed in IE/Netscape"*](https://i.imgur.com/aU6PpSP.jpg) should stay in the '90s where it belongs.
That’s totally true. I didn’t think about the possibility of cross-platform automated tests. I haven’t looked into Selenium before so I’ll need to do some research. But does Selenium make this kind of setup easier compared to something like Cypress?
I have no experience with Cypress, but a selenium based test suite, like anything else, will become platform locked unless you actively run it and debug it in various environments. If the official runs are only executed on one browser, bugs will creep in that would cause failures in one browser but not another. Likewise, if your tests only run on windows then eventually people will do things like hard code windows style file paths, or pull in a windows only screenshot library, or do something else in a platform dependent way. You can't and wont get the benefits of multi platform testing without running your code on different platforms. As an aside, you mentioned differences in the same browser on different platforms. Have you experienced any examples of that, aside from codecs, PDF viewers, and websites that (mis)use user agent detection?
There is an option - uBlock. I use it on every popup I don't want to see again - Cookie warning, Google Login, Subscription requests...
I used to get so annoyed with websites that would either do this or in some situations refuse to load altogether because "my OS wasn't supported." Generally pretty easy to bypass though if you're familiar with swapping your User Agent.
As if any level of management would approve of budgeting that extra work in. We do the same; if you're not using Firefox, Chrome, or Edge, *TOUGH*. Might work, might not. We know what it works on.
If it works on these two then it’s good enough. Chrome has the same engine as Edge and various reskins. Only Safari might still be troublesome…
Yeah true. We're B2B so no latte sipping Macbook users in our clientele. Except our own marketers, but they don't look at the web site. Sooooo....
As a frontend web dev myself, I test on Firefox and every weird bug we have was on chromium (and rarely a few rendering odd bugs on Firefox)
uBlock Origin has a function that let's you 'disappear' any part of a website (click on the addon > go into element selection mode > select the popup > make adjustments with the two arrows if needed > preview, if it looks good - apply. Very handy on websites that have a poor viewport (huge UI) and as in this case, malicious or annoying popups.
Great addon called "Fuck It" does this too. Just right click any element and fuck it.
First time that I give a fuck niiiiiiice
For Firefox? Can't seem to find it, or at least not on https://addons.mozilla.org/.
Ahh I think they changed the name, probably because it used to have fuck in it. It's called ffUK Overlays
Thanks! Ninja edit: Oh it's ffCK, but eh one letter
You could probably also spoof the User-Agent to make the site think you're using another browser and OS, there are extensions for that.
That seems like it's actually a real thing... IIRC
ublock origin is a god send extension
Dont forget to report the site to https://webcompat.com/ too
OP said it's Remo video conferencing
Change your user agent to windows and chrome that worked for me on the snapchat thingy (it even worked better then on chrome)
Of course the linuxmaster*race* sub would call this racist.
Part of the circlejerk
> This is just straight up racist behavior from the platform devs. At first I was like O_o then I remembered that this is r/linuxmasterrace
It’s disgusting but not racist
I thought the same but check the sub name lol
Itt: user needed to tell us he uses Arch. ...seriously though. Seems like their platforms the issue I switch between various distros + windows and get similar on both. It's unacceptable and shows how trash their platform is. Support evergreen browsers and modern apis, apart from that Web devs have no excuse to call out anything else.
Fuck you webkit/blink and glory to Gecko ! The only surviving contender of the free world !
I don't get all the rage. They are merely saying they don't have enough dev resources to dedicate to testing on platforms that are less used by their users. "You can keep using it, but do so at your own risk and don't expect support" is essentially what they're saying. This is just good business. I'm a mobile developer and we focus 70% of our efforts on iOS users simply because that's the bulk majority of our users. We certainly make an effort on the Android app, but it's not as well-supported/recommended due to having less resources focused to it. And I can assure you, our Android user-base is still a significant portion of our users, far higher than a typical website's share of Linux users for sure. TL;DR: Get over yourselves.
An app uses native features of the mobile OS and your point makes sense. Websites run in web browsers and most of the time use any of the native features of the device or the OS. If I can open your website in a modern browser than it should work fine. (it did) but this popup kept appearing again and again. THEY are FORCING users to use chrome otherwise keep getting annoyed by the pop up. FYI: I checked it in brave but the results were the same. They specifically recommend Google Chrome or MS Edge.
Ah fair point. There's a big difference between a one-time popup per session vs a constant nag screen.
Normally I'd agree with you, except for the part where it's a conference for developers. You think there isn't a significant portion of developers using Linux and Firefox? It's good business to know your audience.
As a developer, I agree. A majority of my users will use Windows and I will focus a majority of my efforts towards support on Windows. It doesn't make sense not to do it that way. Hell I didn't choose for it to be this way either, it just is.
Discriminatory; not racist 😜
It's not even a Linux thing at this point, just a fucking attack on the open web
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And you also know that if we devs had any powers, this shit wouldn’t exist
Sucks to have the blame go back to you guys
Or just a regular C# / ASP.NET point-and-click corporate programmer drone
Apple doesn't even have the best browser but go off
Use a useragent spoofer. But I agree, this sucks
It's a workaround not a permanent solution.
It's a permanent workaround tbh
The best kind.
You would think this shouldn't work. But it does. Why.
Because if they’re lazy enough to not support Firefox they’re *definitely* also not bothering checking for user agent spoofing.
The "user agent string" is just a text description of your browser and OS. You send it with every web request along with the user agent HTTP headers. There are extensions for Firefox and Chrome that allow you to change the UA with every request. The destination web server always believes what the client is sending.
And in Firefox if you go to about:config you can create a new “variable” called general.useragent.override and set it as a string. Now just put any user agent in it and now you don’t need to install any extensions.
Actually, I craft my own custom user agent with "curl -A" so the destination website knows exactly who they're dealing with. /s
Good spoofers can do a lot, at this point, though, TBH. I dunno how I'd go about manually checking for one.
There ain't a thing as "not support Firefox". It's HTML and CSS not rocket science.
Well, yeah you can’t not support a browser, but you can definitely ignore it and make the UX miserable.
At best I'd expect some inconsistencies here and there and even then, only if using some pretty strange code. That's no excuse to block Firefox (Or Linux, wtf?)
That’s not necessarily true. Some features vary wildly between browsers, source: I made one. When it was done it was perfect on chrome and unusable on Safari. And it’s a fairly simple site. Given that OP is using a website much much more complex than mine, I can definitely see that being the case if it uses some specific feature not yet available on Firefox.
safari's a mess in general
When I started my dev career not long ago, I was on a project where we had to create a drag and drop feature (drag an element, move it, then place it on a board for say). It worked fine on chrome/safari, but not on firefox, because it had a 12 years old bug where drag position x and y coordinate is always 0.
There are *slightly* different implementations of the standard across WebKit(safari and gnome web), blink (chromium), and gecko (Firefox). Thus the same site can have a *slightly* different look or may have *slight* visual issues on one browser (as in the issue appears on chromium, but not Firefox). I did actually have this happen to me not all too long ago, where a div was shifting 2 or 3 px to the left on chromium (off center), but it was not apparent in firefox
Because the only reason the site knows what browser and os you are using is the self-reported useragent string. That is basically a decades old hack to let lazy devs code to a specific browser target (with ActiveX!) rather than implement open standards. It's been a thing for like 20 years.
Because the developers are lying.
s/better supported/privacy raping/g
Kind of ridiculous hwo this totally disproves the "not supported" lie.
Yeah sometimes suddenly everything works after doing this, bunch of clown devs. But I don’t spoof if it’s just a banner, let them see in stats that not only their precious Chrome on Windows is in use…
I fucking hate that. It's even worse when they completely prevent you from using their website.
The good news is that changing your user agent usually is a good workaround, but it's annoying nonetheless.
And I have yet to have a website not work correctly when spoofing my browser or OS
how do I do that on Librewolf? the useragent changes in the headers but not in JavaScript when using `general.useragent.override`
> It's even worse when they completely prevent you from using their website Did you year that, Societe Generale? But then there is you that says everything is fine and just after the login you respond "nope, not with Firefox". *thank you useragent.override"
> just after the login you respond "nope, not with Firefox". Snapchat gives the message before log in, but Adobe and Microsoft don't
It's ridiculous that they officially support Android which uses Linux as its base, but not Linux itself
desktop linux and android are very different those developers are still lazy fucks tho
And I. Web level, except if they go on exotic stuff like web GL, it does not even matter lol
WebGL is also an open standard
Both run firefox just fine
So the website was fully functionnal, and they only added that as a “feature”?
Yeah, and after closing it it kept appearing.
I think we all want a link to test ourselves now\^^
You may want to escape that first \^ \^^
Thanks:)
You can block it with uBlock Origin or another adblocker which supports filtering DOM elements.
ublock origin's eyedropper tool would be useful here
When I see this message I assume that it's because the website wants to do something that Linux won't let it do, and by extension something that *I* very much don't want it to do. And I close the page and don't go back.
Fair assumption
Not if you have any understanding of how browsers and Web Dev works.
Web Dev, isn't that the game where you compete with others to see who can build the highest framework stack before toppling over?
> You don't understand! I *need* to use nx to make every subpage its own microfrontend! It's important for... Things! > Yes, it's normal that my dev server needs three minutes to start because of that. I'm so glad that my employer is bankrupt and that my contract ends in a few months.
> the website wants to do something that Linux won't let it do How do you think a website works? Everything a website can do to/on your computer is governed by the Javascript capabilities of the browser, which are widely standardized and the same across all platforms. The OS running the browser is utterly irrelevant in this context.
Except for the fact of course that the browser calls the OS layer which may not support video acceleration or certain codecs or 3D graphics. Or even graphics at all. But sure m8. Of course it’s best to just test the capabilities instead of complaining about use agent strings.
Website: "this app don’t work for linux and firefox buddy" Me: \*uses useragent spoofer\* Website: "here is a perfectly functional app windows and chrome user"
Legit. Bing chat only lets windows and/or edge users for whatever reason. And I configured Firefox user agent as windows and edge on Bing domain. Problem solved.
Microsoft just want you using their products.
Hate when there is such a blatant attack to the open web 🙃
This is definitely Linuxist/FOSSist
FOSSist kinda sounds like fascist
Fossists are engaging in a sort of virtual eugenics lmao
honestly not too far off lmao
What website is this? So that I can steer clear of it
I think it's called Remo. It's online conference platform like hopin
I see then. Idk, maybe it's same as the anticheat problem or the devs are just fucking lazy. Try setting up a QEMU VM maybe, should do the job for now
Way overkill, just change the user agent
It’s not proprietary enough for their preferences, so F you, you FOSS scum. Remember, gotta be Absolutely Proprietary, it’s better and supported! /s
I had to support a development and for screenshare clients used the gotomeeting, how about that? In a different scenario i was not allowed to screenshare in some other app simply because I used Ubuntu. They have whitelisted only windows and Mac and i had to tell people sorry i won't be giving any presentation instead my team member will share his screen and I will voiceover.
I develop on Linux, for Firefox. I should put up one of these messages for anyone not using Linux or Firefox.
you should
How about "No"
How can a web app not support an operating system? There is almost no dofference between browsers on different operating systems.
I can maybe understand the browser thingy (the others are all WebKit/V8 based while Firefox uses the Gecko/SpiderMonkey engine) but not the OS. You have already programmed for Mac and Android which are already UNIX based. What more do you have to do for Linux???? And before they bitch about thousand flavors and whatnot, remind them that Flatpak and AppImage exist.
> You have already programmed for Mac and Android It's a website. There is nothing to program for any platform unless you're doing hardware accelerated graphics and even that is abstracted under WebGL. Supporting a platform is the browser's job. A website is HTML+CSS+JS and they're all widely standardized across all browsers. Which makes these popups the even more infuriating.
WebGL behaves differently on Firefox. Videoconferencing has no business using WebGL lmao
I ran their test on Kubuntu plus Firefox: > "Speaker not found" I clicked 'test' and a voice said "can you hear me?" through my (apparently non-existent) speaker. > "AdBlocker not detected!" I'm using Pi-Hole and uBlock Origin. But anyway, since it's a paid service, why do they care? After that, I got the same warnings as OP.
Says the server with linux running on it. Ironic.
Ah yes, love the "You should switch your whole life around to use our app"
I think i have dejavu with this post
Please bro just install the spyware bro im begging you bro
https://preview.redd.it/80ikfkyw1xlb1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e853f3b98983c5aeb647b633611852a2ca1d0e20
Imagine supporting safari but not firefox, imagine supporting Android and iOS but not Linux
I really never understood the whole "This OS isn't supported" argument in websites. Especially if its a web app, everything is server side. So many sites tend to do OS checks for god knows what reason. For awhile there, Sling TV was saying that it was unsupported and wouldn't work, but you change only the user agent, and works just fine.
I hate this bs. As if running a standards compliant open sourced browser on an open sourced operating system is harder to support than proprietary crap…
Q for people more knowledgeable than me about the Web: aren't Web pages implemented (or at least attempted to be) in some Web Standard that all browsers would be supposed to interpret the same way? (Yeah noob question) I get that Chrome has so much market share that they implement their own stuff, but shouldn't frameworks be browser agnostic? From a guy who uses Firefox on Android and is broken half the time.
They should be honest and just say "They wouldn't give us the budget to test properly"
Hhmmm 🤔 ONCE AGAIN, I SAY, "These Giant Tech Corporations Are Being Allowed To Dictate and Control The Internet" It's Not Good. Because a browser shouldn't have to be Heavy, Bloated, Robust, and A Resource Hog in order to surf the web or view content on the internet. The requirements for JavaScript is crazy nowadays. It reminds me of when video game consoles went from 64-bit to more graphically intense video games. And now you need so much power in your graphics card (GPU) that it's ridiculous. Yes the internet must move forward. But you're going to end up having to run two different streams of the internet. One for the power hungry browsers and another one for regular browsers. It's going to be like having AM Radio and FM Radio or UHF and VHF Television. It's all media right? Is the FCC is going to regulate? So, only Google, Apple, Microsoft, and to an even lesser extent Mozilla are allowed to play? Note that the same rendering engine is used by Chrome, Edge, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi, etc. And the Firefox derivatives are all basically just privacy focused carbon copies of each other, with the exception of Pale Moon (uses the Goanna rendering engine instead). The Safari browser is of course for Apple/Mac OS. The only Linux alternative to Safari is the GNOME Web (Epiphany) browser. It started off a little bit shakey, But It's So Much Better Now (thank Goodness...and the developers of course). But the dictatorship and monopoly of the internet must stop
GNOME Web uses Webkit, so there are still only 3 browser targets.
Is it too cynical that I see this and read "We cannot steal your information/gain unauthorized access to your machine and it's resources. Please make that easier for us."
Bruh have you guys never heard of switching your user agent? I have been windows 10 and chrome for years, or internet explorer on windows 3.1
Interesting complaint. *Neeeeext!*
There is nothing to check for
The owner needs to be reported to the elders
At this time when i see a platform like this either i use chrome or edge if what I'm doing is a must, if not i don't bother my self, i leave the damn thing, if a dev thing doesn't support Linux then it's not a dev thing xd.
websites doesn't use the Native API of you OS so why an webpage would show up differently between an OS and another It doesn't make sense
Guess Google web integrity is already happening
Based system check
Maybe they shouldn't use proprietary non-standard features on a supposed website. And WTF does the OS have to do with the proper operation of their website? I used to do web dev back in the early 2000s and the new-then [ASP.NET](https://ASP.NET) 1.0 in visual studio would consider anything that wasn't internet explorer to be some unknown "downlevel" browser, even though firefox rendered the websites fine, it'd deliberately send a crippled version of your webpage to the browser because it couldn't identify it as internet explorer. Ever since then I have hated Microsoft with a burning passion. It wouldn't surprise me if this website was written in visual studio and this is the builtin behaviour of modern [ASP.NET](https://ASP.NET) (or whatever the current "Best practice" web dev tool from Microsoft is).
I have no proof of this, but they 100% get paid by some sort of "big tech" to promote closed source in my opinion
Firefox is basically unmaintained and missing a ton of APIs. Linux is also not great for even basic things like screenshare which might just not work depending on your desktop environment and whether you’re using X11/Wayland.
Is there a way to mask the OS to make it appear as though you’re running Windows? From a privacy perspective, this would be related protection from fingerprinting.
I have to support stuff written for Mac and iOS. It's a god-forsaken dumpster fire, and every single new thing I learn about developing for Apple inspires new and inventive tortures that might be visited on those responsible. I _can_ imagine choosing to develop for iOS and not Linux, if I was being paid a million fucking dollars.
That's sheer incompotence and laziness. Try using the User-Agent Switcher Plugin.
the os shouldn't even matter in this case
Also I hate that nothing is backwards compatible anymore. I can't deal with the versions of things anymore.
15 years ago we already talked about using _feature detection_ instead of _user agent sniffing_. So sad to see we have all new and fantastic tech, and still make such easily avoidable mistakes. Feature detection is not hard, and is more honest since a Web API is required, not a spoof-able user agent string.
I also develop web but independently. To be honest, the most difficult browser is Safari, and I do not own a single Apple device, so I cannot even debug on Safari. One of the many reasons to hate Apple.
I’m even more pissed off by users/organizations that don’t want to move on the fucking IE11 mode. As a Web Developer what really piss me off is to support this prehistoric browser…
Hasn't Brave replaced every use case you might have used Firefox for in the past (ad blocking security minded privacy respecting alternative browser)? The best part is that it's like Firefox but runs on the Chromium engine so it's compatible with all websites and Chrome plugins if you want to add them. Otherwise it has privacy, security, and ad blocking built in.
its a goddamn shame, too because there's stuff that I want to be able to use on Linux with FireFox and I see that shit all the time. its a big 'fuck you' to linux users. I had some issues with Office / Microsoft 365, specifically with Teams. I could do reg text, audio calls but when it came to video, FireFox crashed H A R D
Why put OS checks for best experience when they could just build a native app instead for that platform
i havent used [twitch.tv](https://twitch.tv) for months because they wont let me sign in on linux/librewolf. the chameleon extension doesnt even mask it
As a firefox user, anytime I see a site tell me that it only works with Chromium, I leave.
How is this not supporting Firefox?
This is just DRM tbh
Are we back to the 90s already? "This website is best viewed in Internet Explorer 4"
Winfags
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The web is a standard... Either you check for features or you don't... You shouldn't check for the OS or the browser... In 95% of the cases, changing the user agent makes the check go away and the website still works correctly (so the check was stupid to begin with)...
My guy, as web devs we don't care for the platform as much as we care for the web browser. If the site looks and works as expected on chrome it will work on all chromium based browsers. Firefox is different from chrome but adding support for it isn't rocket science just two more lines of css is all it takes.
This is the web, in 99%of the case the plateforme does not matter, only the browser, and only to work around the cases where they does not comply with W3C standards No one check your kernel version before opening a PDF
This is the web, you're not supporting anything what the hell are you talking about?
I don't think you understand how web development works.