What to do? Maybe there are more BSD desktop users?

resora

resora

Good day, dear colleagues. I think everyone has already noticed that when you visit a website that shows your browser and version, if you are using FreeBSD, it often identifies you as Linux, even though that’s not correct.
I am a desktop FreeBSD user, and when I register in WhatsApp Chromium, it tells me my operating system is Linux.

Perhaps there aren’t that many Linux desktop users, and a significant portion of the percentage counted as Linux users are actually BSD users—or maybe even users of other UNIX systems. If there are enough of us, perhaps software developers will add proper FreeBSD support for package creation and maintenance.

For example, I installed FreeCAD and KiCAD, and I also donated to their projects when possible. Everything works perfectly.
I would really like to see more support for projects such as Espressif IDF, Arduino, and others.
 
We had this point already somewhere.
When i recall corretcly, the point simply is, if you(r browser) don't identify with some "commonly known and accepted" OS, then many websites simply refuse to work correctly, or block you complelety.
 
Maturin said:
We had this point already somewhere.
When i recall corretcly, the point simply is, if you(r browser) don't identify with some "commonly known and accepted" OS, then many websites simply refuse to work correctly, or block you complelety.
Click to expand...
Is that part of the User Agent string or something? Some browsers let you change that I think
 
How to detect low-quality contributions here and elsewhere? Look for terms like "I think", "if I'm not mistaken", "I don't use it but" ... etc.

What I'm going to offer is this evidence (on FreeBSD of course):
firefox-esr-140.7.0_4,2
user-agent string from logfile: "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/115.0"
Click to expand...

But be aware that JavaScript may be able to detect your real OS and real version of the browser if you allow such scripts.
 
A few years ago, Firefox on FreeBSD used to identify itself as FreeBSD.
It caused problems with major websites like large US banks and newspapers. A lot of sites either flag your system as either not up to date or as mobile if they do not recognise the browser and OS. At that time, users had to change their User Agent string to Linux themselves (and remember to update the version number if you weren't using a plugin!)
This is simply avoiding that issue.
 
Not sure what websites break with non-Linux reporting, but it seems odd to specify non-FreeBSD by default (Firefox isn't running in Linuxulator)

jwillia3 said:
A few years ago, Firefox on FreeBSD used to identify itself as FreeBSD.
It caused problems with major websites like large US banks and newspapers. A lot of sites either flag your system as either not up to date or as mobile if they do not recognise the browser and OS. At that time, users had to change their User Agent string to Linux themselves (and remember to update the version number if you weren't using a plugin!)
This is simply avoiding that issue.
Click to expand...
I wonder if it'd be cooler to have Firefox on FreeBSD default to FreeBSD UA, but have a weak dep on a package to force different UA? I'd be interested in reporting FreeBSD use and don't imagine I browse websites that'd break with non-mainstream UA (I don't bank :p)
 
A rule for knowledgeable web developers was to never use the user agent for anything because it could be forged. It's a useless metric. If one just follows the standards you would never have any issues except those related to specific browsers but there are tests for that.
 
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