MOST of the hassle - "Linux hassle" - is due to poorly supported/unsupported hardware, closed codecs not being preinstalled (think U.S. legislation) AND PLAIN MS "PRACTICAL JOKES":
One of the puters I've Linuxified is - mostly - used by a 10-year-old girl. Last week her dad (an old friend of mine) called and said she wants Messenger - "all" her friends are using it. OK, not my thing, but a quick Ubuntu forum search says that Pidgin (preinstalled) can do MSN, ditto for aMSN and Emesene. Ah yes, says my friend... but - using Linux - how does one create an account?
A trip to enemy territory (MSN - *ugh* - pages): the "advertised" procedure is to first download/install MSN/Windows Live/Whteveritsname Messenger and then create an account with it. No can do with the above replacements. Took me some Googling to find the page where you can register (aka get Windows Live Hotmail ID) using a net browser. In order to be able to give advice, I registered, verified that the darn thing actually worked with aMSN and Emesene... it did. Fine. Problem solved.
Yesterday I got a call from my friend. He told me - laughing his arse off - that while the messenger thingy works perfectly, he'd tried to use the webmail. operative word TRIED. OK... I logged in... got a warning of NOT having an up-to-date browser (BULLS*IT). I Was able to proceed, though... chose "New Message"... filled in recipient info, message title... COULDN'T COMPOSE THE MESSAGE. The composing window was grayed out.
OK... another Ubuntu Forum search: this is a user agent practical joke. This is the default info Ubuntu's Firefox sends:
Code:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; fi-FI; rv:1.9.0.3) Gecko/2008092510 Ubuntu/8.04 (hardy) Firefox/3.0.3
Linux? Ubuntu? Muhahahahahaha says MicroShaft. No worries, though: install the User Agent Switcher extension (
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59 ), get a good User Agent List import file for User Agent Switcher (
http://www1.qainsight.net:8080/ct.ashx? ... 070304.xml )... and, now fully armed, hit the MicroShaft HotChair Baloney pages WITH YOUR FIREFOX CAMOUFLAGED AS "Firefox 2.0 (Win XP)":
Code:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061010 Firefox/2.0
And whaddayaknow: everything works.
Nice work ONCE AGAIN, MicroDweebs!