Not supporting linux websites

[gnuvistawouldbecool]

I don't get this, at all. I understand that you can fail to support a particular browser on your website, since the browser is what actually interacts with the website. But how exactly does the OS make any difference?

I suppose it makes some sense when one considers DRM (to an extent, with things like the analog hole, Youtube videos stored in /tmp, etc), but how exactly does the OS make any difference to a website? Surely the Broswer + plugins is all that should really matter?

So anyone who can explain this would be welcome to enlighten me on this matter.

[starcannon]

If the website requires ActiveX or some other proprietary component that is not available to the GNU/Linux Operating System, then it is in the best interest of the website owner to use a sniffer to let you know they don't support your operating system. Saves them endless email from us "non-existent" GNU/Linux users.

Crazy huh? It's said that we do not have a noticeable market share, yet we seem to be large enough to cause support issues for proprietary os centric websites, to the degree that they require an OS sniffer to filter us out.

User Agent Switcher can sometimes get you past the issue if it is just ignorance on the part of the site owner, and not an actual technical problem.

GL and HF

[gnuvistawouldbecool]

Isn't ActiveX an entirely IE system though? Surely the Mac OS X market is big enough to warrant not having such a restrictive system by now?

[starcannon]

Looks like a pretty problematic situation for Mac users as well:


Results 1 - 10 of about 1,940,000 for activex osx. (0.30 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 9,200,000 for active x osx. (0.28 seconds)