For all of my fellow Linux users, programmers and techs out there, there appears to be an ongoing challenge with the business community regarding the use of Linux and also that of the Mac, whose lineage also derives from the Unix platform.

Most of you already know the history of the development of Linux, with all its variations. A truly remarkable planetary wide undertaking.

Many of us promote the benefits and value of Linux to our friends and business associates, sometimes with a reply from them: "My online experience is more difficult with Linux than with the products from Redmond."

Linux is not for the lazy. However, there is always a solution to be found for any challenge.

Here is a challenge worth pursuing: I would like to find out from any of you if you have encountered difficulties navigating sites on the net, while utilizing Linux, which are maintained by utility companies; electric, gas, phone, or any of the financial organizations; online banking etc.

Increasingly, it appears they are disenfranchising us due to the Linux OS.

My preferred setup for commercial online activities is Fedora Core with a Mozilla sourced browser, (lineage from the original Netscape). Its fast, clean and well supported. This is my preference. Yours might be different.

I used to be able to navigate the Bank of America home banking web site since 2000 with this setup. They have changed their website recently, and now I cannot navigate it correctly as before. Each time I click on a new or different page on their site, I am requested to re enter my username and password, continually, with all of the additional authentication that they require. This is after I am already loged in to their site and am negotiating with their SSL. After 4 or 5 page attempts, this can be really agravating.

Their web support department, on different dates with different people, now insist that they do not support any Linux product, or any other browser except IE!

I have the same difficulty with the Washington Mutual Bank online support people.

What really is becoming a patern is when I attempted to enroll in paperless billing from my electric utility provider, Southern California Edison. They promote paperless billing notification via email, as well as online bill pay, which should be a convenience and service.

Again, when I could not navigate their site properly to enroll in these 2 services, I was advised by their online tech support people that they only support Microsoft products and their IE browser. "If I experienced difficulties, I would have to change out operating systems and browser to what they support."

These patterns appear at first to be institutional arrogance.

If anyone has any constructive solutions, please post them. I don't believe that they have any idea how large the Linux community really is.

After 2 emails to their internet support departments, as well as 3 attempted follow up calls by me, there has been no reply so far. And this has been going on for months now with all of these companies.

Have any of you experienced similar situations? What was your solution?

I have tried different variations of Linux with the same results. My basic setup has been the same since 2000, when their sites were simpler, and my access appeared OK. I have even taken a spare machine loaded with the same OS, and placed it in front of the router and firewall to satisfy the concerns of the so called support people. No change was evident. Same problems.

I have looked at all of my logs for a pattern and keep Ethereal up during my sessions and save the output for later review.

I have also tried various browsers including Epipany, Konqueror, Opera, in addition to the latest Firefox rev. with no improvement.

There used to be a time when good web designers would incorporate both the original javascript from Netscape as well as Microsofts active X in their web pages, so all flavors of browsers could engage.

I am hoping that there is a constructive win-win solution for these new developments, for everyone. Obviously, the number of Linux users grows daily, but the business people don't acknowledge this, or don't care.


Thanks,

Bank Of America works fine after they updated their site. My wife had problems with their old site, she was unable to pay one of her credit cards. She called support a number of times. She was never told Linux is not supported. On contrary, she was told to try again in a few days until they fix it.

I have been using Bank Of America with Linux/Firefox for the past few months; and have not had any issues.

My bank and utility companies present no problems using Linux and Epiphany. A couple years ago I had problems using the Verizon site. I called monthly to report my dissatisfaction with that situation, and they always assured me they were working on it. After a few months, the problem was resolved.

The first-line phone support is always instructed to say something like the reply you describe. Always ask to talk to a technical person from the internet support team.

If I was convinced that a company did not support Linux and had no intention of doing so, I would simply eliminate my business relationship with them. There have plenty of more enlightened competition.

To be honest, I've never had any real problems with this personally.

One issue I had with a bank was solved by changing the useragent string on Firefox to claim it was IE, and another issue with emails not rendering in anything except Outlook went away after my credit card company just sorted out their template one day.

On the other hand, I've worked in support for web based offerings in the past (the training site for a large Unix vendor), and even they had pretty strict rules on what would be supported. Anything except IE and Mozilla was out, and our backline engineers wouldn't touch any case that involved Firefox, Safari, et al. We were even berated for suggesting that users /try/ Firefox to see if the problem was a specific configuration issue. They knew fine that Firefox would work, and Konqueror etc would also have a good chance too, but the services hadn't been tested fully enough with other browsers to confidently support them.

The beancounters are very much aware of the market penetration of browsers and OSes, and they decide what's officially supported and what's not based on the cost/benefit. There's no arrogance - the numbers decide the level of support they're willing to offer, and those are the rules that the support teams work to. Banks are probably the worst offenders, since they have massive consumer userbases and therefore comparatively few technically inclined users on Linux, Firefox etc. The fact that you're in America probably isn't helping, since the alternative browser usage is pretty low over there.

Complaining to 1st/2nd line support won't get you anywhere - they know the company policy, and it's not in the interests of their sanity to do anything about changing things. To get any sort of traction, you need to have a financially substantial contract with the company (unlikely for consumer services), access to a sympathetic company executive, or a public presence that allows you to embarrass them into doing something.

You're better off voting with your feet. Go somewhere else. Tell Bank of America to shove it.

Dave

I also do online banking and utility payments with no hassle from 'da man'. This really does sound like more of a configuration issue on your part. Changing the user agent in your browser might fix the problem. Your constant login problems may be a cookie saving issue.

Yum ... cookies ...

For the most part, I do not have issues, but there are a few. Currently I am working an issue with BofA. Consistent with earlier posts, their site works 99% with Firefox. There is one page where a few link don't work. I actually found the issue in the code and am working to get them to fix it.

The buzz I hear is that this is the year of Linux-on-the-desktop. If so, the various bureaucrats will not bea ble to ignore us. Meanwhile, "the wheel that squeaks gets the grease."

I've had problems with some sites that changed their cookie format. The way to resolve it is to delete all the cookies from the site and download new ones.

Thank you all for your comments. I really should have emphasized more that I have had no difficulty with access to these sites since 2000, however, now something is changing.

I am using the same setup with the same gear since day 1 on my side.

Only during the last part of 2007 were changes made by the various providers web sites that made access to them more difficult utilizing Linux and Mozilla. Granted, they might have been changes that do not effect everyone, but they are significant.

Now there were mentions of cookies in the comments. Cookies are automatically wiped after each session. I also have never allowed third party cookies from third party sites. A secure SSL site should not utilize third party servers, and I tested that out years ago.
By the way, if some of you have analysed the cookies with an editor, you would see that there
is more information disclosed than is necessary on some sites, allowing tracking by others, not by the designated web site. Again, this security option was OK for years trouble free.

I also automatically block popups and limit javascript priviledges in changing my desktop view. Sometimes on non secure sites, these have the effect of blocking unwelcome redirects.
Of course secure redirects are allowed on a site by site basis.

I also years ago dis-allowed any encryption standard that was less than 256 strong. In reality, anything less than 1024 is not in the best interests of security.

Most of you know that there are options in about:config that allow for fine tuning of the browser, and these were done years ago, again with no problems.

I have noticed on the BofA site last year, that they have enabled a "chat" feature running in background, that comes up occassionally. I have always disabled chat type functions on my personal machines, and disabled those ports on my firewall tables, because of the various security bulletins advisories. Now we have VoIP over chat introduced, causing headaches for some of my fellow sys admins, who have advised me of various security breaches with that so far.

The purpose of my post was to gain insight into a possible pattern of changes by certain Web Sites, that might cause unforseen dificulties to users of those sites.

Your comments have been enlightening. Especially about corporate management mandates.

Metrics applications are aimed at the vast majority (MS) in most settings.

What I have found out since, on other forums, is that unfortunately the Corporate mindset still considers residential desktop Linux, a minority in their demographics.

The irony is that for many of them, increasingly they are utilizing Linux in their back office server environment. Google's servers are totaly Linux!

Now for Mozilla, I'm sure you all know that Netscape, the origin of the original Mozilla engine, that was later purchased and controlled by AOL, will cease operations and stop supporting that offering at the close of the year 2007.

They have recommended that their users now utilize the non profit Mozilla Foundation as their new resourse. This is going to prove very interesting for all the web site decision makers.

Suddenly the numbers for the Mozilla browser are changing...

I've used BOA for years and never really encountered any issues, though recently started using their paybills online features and such. Still no problems.

Same with local utility companies and linux.

I would think the problems in using a web site / web based service were because of the browser (or such application) and the server content (like web pages content) didn't cooperate. Like using ActiveX on the pages and trying to access them with a non-IE browser, or using Flash and trying to access the pages with a browser that didn't have Flash plugin. The operating system behind it shouldn't matter; the idea of web pages was, or so I believe, that they would work without caring about the operating system below the browser application. Browser and content compatibility then is another matter; there are certain standards (refer to w3c for example), and their idea is that if the content is created as the standards require, and browsers too (I'll say "browser" though the app could be something else), then they can cooperate. It's like they speak the same language. Sadly this is not the case 100%, ActiveX being one example, and Flash too to some extent - however there is a Flash player plugin for many browsers out there, so that's not as bad as ActiveX, which is like speaking Chinese to an English-only kid.

There are some sites that are rather difficult to access with non-IE browsers, but to my delight the number is decreasing (or I should say, the number of sites I meet). Some of the site problems can be circumvented by using a browser that can "fake it's identity", like telling Konqueror to say it's really an IE5. Others can't; if the content relies on ActiveX, it's no good faking the browser identity, because there is no ActiveX stuff on Linux. Not on mine, anyway.

And luckily notifying big companies that their website is unaccessible to a wide customer range usually, or hopefully at least, leads to them fixing the situation - best case is if they trash the old site and make a new one that is as compatible as possible with any browser. A sad example is a browser-based heavy-use application (for example a "portal" to a financial database) in a firm that heavily depends on Microsoft developed things not available for other platforms: it's usually expensive so after it's set up people don't want to switch over to something else, it's heavy so the developers don't easily mess up with the structure, it's delicate so the changes take long time to come up because they need to be thoroughly tested to avoid problems (who would want to make an upgrade that caused the company's financial computing to freeze for two months until it was fixed?), and lastly it's sometimes made by Microsoft Gold Partner firm, who gets somekind of love from Microsoft and in response has sworn to use Microsoft products in their own products. After a company has bought this sort of thing, they have a few servers, big databases, boxes full of expensive licences and endless hours of personnel training for the new system..and they are rather unwilling to do all that again soon. It means they're pretty tied up for that product for the next years or in a bad case decades, before someone has the money, time and guts to make a difference. In the mean time all non-IE (=> Windows) desktops don't do much. Trying to get them run IE on top of Wine is not an easy task either..

Actually every day web surfers are in a good position: they have a variety of operating systems and applications and versions, and the mass can say what they think of some website, and the website may have to surrender and change itself if it doesn't please the mass. Companies (intranet, web-based applications etc.) are in a worse position, because they don't have the time or money to play around with different solutions, and once they grab something, it usually needs to hold for quite some time. A good choice means happy users, and a bad choice means living with it. They've got contracts and can't usually just say to the product seller "we want you to change this", because the product seller tells them "no we won't, it reads in the contract, and we're selling these so much that we don't care about what you little bosses down there say - if you start crying, we'll rise the price, and you're going to go trough all this again and pay more".