If and how do you think Linux distributions should brand browser user agent strings?

Jevan · 08-16-2008, 03:33 PM

Some Linux distros like to add their branding to User Agent strings. Some do it for all browsers available, and some only do it for the installed or default browsers. The ones that do add their distro name to the user agent string all seem to do it their own way. Here are a few different ways:

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/3.5; Linux; X11; x86_64) KHTML/3.5.6 (like Gecko) (Kubuntu)

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/2.0.0.7 (Ubuntu-feisty)

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050927 Debian/1.7.8-1sarge3

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/20070508 (Debian-1.8.1.4-3) Galeon/2.0.2 (Debian package 2.0.2-4)

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.13) Gecko/20080208 Mandriva/2.0.0.13-1mdv2008.1 (2008.1) Firefox/2.0.0.13

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0) Gecko/2008061600 SUSE/3.0-1.2 Firefox/3.0

Check your user agent.

Do you think it makes sense for Distributions to add this information? Which way makes most sense? Should it be added to all browsers available, including the repositories?

Randux · 08-16-2008, 03:38 PM

There are some problems caused by having the user agent set to a nonstandard value. Some web sites don't work at all, sometimes javascript breaks, etc. I think in the long run it's probably good to have everyone and his cousin branding their browser, maybe the idiot web programmers will learn not to write for IE and will start writing proper code that doesn't depend on using a certain browser, when nobody can visit their site. In the meanwhile it's very annoying.

Berticus · 08-20-2008, 08:10 AM

Not everybody who checks user agent strings discriminates against non-IE users. I did it once to redirect IE users to a page that will work for them with a little suggestion at the bottom to check out alternative browsers. I did the whole redirection thing so that in the URL you could easily see the "USEIE" folder even though I could've easily changed the page accordingly. But anyway, the pages assumed users weren't using IE. In the real world, sure it's bad to redirect the browser the majority uses, but I thought it made the most sense to redirect the browser that stood alone (i.e. it's the only browser that wouldn't interpret my pages correctly). Instead of jumping through hoops finding hacks to fix css, I just had a dumbed down version for them.