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Hotmail does work--badly--with Linux
18 comments- TAGS:e-mail, Firefox, hotmail, IceWeasel, user agent, web browser
- IT TOPICS:Desktop Applications, Internet, Linux, Networking, Open Source, Operating Systems, Servers & Data Center, Software
Linux-Watch has reported that at least one Linux user was unable to use the newly redesigned Windows Live Hotmail. Other Linux desktop users have also reported problems with the new Hotmail.
However, a closer look reveals that the problem isn't with Linux and Hotmail's interoperability, but with how Hotmail handles browsers with user-agent settings that it doesn't recognize. The user-agent string is sent by your browser to the Web server hosting the site you're visiting. This character string, at the least, identifies your Web browser to the server. It usually also contains optional details, which are called tokens. These typically include your operating system, language, and hardware. For example, my user string at my main desktop is:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.3) Gecko/2008091700 SUSE/3.0.3-1.1 Firefox/3.0.3
That tells the Web server that I'm using a Mozilla 5.0 compatible Web browser, on a PC with X11 windowing running on a 64-bit SUSE Linux system using the Gecko Web rendering engine and the Firefox 3.03 Web browser.
You can see what your browser is reporting to servers by visiting the, What is my User Agent Web site. Notice I didn't say 'what your browser actually is,' I said. 'what it's reporting itself to be to servers.' It's a big difference and that's where the fix for the Hotmail problem comes from.
You see the user who ran into trouble was running IceWeasel. This is a version of Firefox that's used by Debian Linux users. To make a long story short, Debian users objected to Mozilla's Firefox image trademarks so they cloned Firefox into IceWeasel. Unfortunately, for IceWeasel users, Hotmail doesn't know how to handle a browser that identifies itself as IceWeasel and bungles it.
This is not an uncommon problem, and it's not just limited to IceWeasel. Other Web sites blow up when presented with a browser user-agent string it doesn't know. It is, on the other hand, a pretty stupid mistake for a Web server programmer to make.
For example, a user-agent string for the first version of IceWeasel looks like:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061205 Iceweasel/2.0.0.1 (Debian-2.0.0.1+dfsg-2)
Notice that the very first thing that the user agent includes? Any Web site should be able to handle a Web browser that identifies itself as a Mozilla-compatible Web browser. Heck, Microsoft's own Internet Explorer 7 identifies itself as a Mozilla-compatible Web browser!
Be that as it may, if you want to use Hotmail you have to convince it that you're running a browser that Hotmail recognizes. The IceWeasel developers recommend that you use the Firefox add-on, User Agent Switcher. IceWeasel's crew recommends you follow these instructions, so that your browser will now look like a copy of Firefox running on Windows XP for maximum compatibility with broken sites.
I tested it myself with a late beta of Debian 5 and it did indeed let me use Hotmail. Once there, however, I wondered why I had bothered. I found the new Hotmail interface to be clumsy and slow.
At first I thought it was just me and my slow test system, but then I discovered that many users hate the revised Hotmail interface. Microsoft has said that it's determined to stay the course, but most Hotmail users want their old interface back and they want it back now.
So, there you have it. You can use Hotmail with Linux, but whether you really want to use it is an entirely different question. As for me, I only keep an account around for test purposes. I use Evolution for all my e-mail purposes and Gmail when I'm away from my own computers and I have to use a Web-browser based e-mail system.
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