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I should've been way more clear about my gripe with the Windows TCP/IP stack. Why the hell does the TCP/IP stack eat itself? No other OS I've ever used has the

by taiki 13y ago

I should've been way more clear about my gripe with the Windows TCP/IP stack. Why the hell does the TCP/IP stack eat itself? No other OS I've ever used has the nuttiness that is netsh winsock reset as a regular troubleshooting step when diagnosing network connectivity issues. I was long under the impression that the reason why that kept happening was that the NT kernel didn't have a robust TCP/IP stack of its own and was reimplementing the BSD sockets via a translation layer that was easily hooked into by godawful apps that felt like putting whatever it wanted there. ReFS wasn't on my radar, and that's my fault. The registry isn't fine. As of Windows 8 it can still hose a machine by going corrupt. The concept of having a centralized application database for application state and other metadata isn't a bad one, the current implementation absolutely sucks. It goes corrupt and the entire machine is rendered useless. Granted, the current solution is to just back it up and hope none of the backups corrupt either. Corruption doesn't happen from just people manually messing with it, corruption happens from a lot of apps reading and writing from it at the same time. A lot of apps not even bothering with good practices in how to handle it either. As far as Win32 and the driver model not being your problem... When crappy apps written in 20 year old APIs and devices using crappy drivers crash your machine, then it absolutely IS your problem. I can't speak to your use of OSX with a keyboard. However, given my choices, I'll take weird metakey combos over, "Is my TCP/IP stack going to eat itself this week?" Besides, emacs uses nothing but crappy and bizarre meta key combos and it's still a thing. So.

nbevans 13y ago
None of the "problems" of which you speak are actually mainstream problems. It's perfectly possible to hose your network stack in any OS. Just don't do that and you'll be fine. USB drivers, sound drivers, printer drivers, web cam drivers, etc etc, are all using user-mode drivers since Vista. They cannot crash your system. Similarly, graphics card drivers use a special model that means they can auto-restart if they were to crash; which as it happens is exceptionally rare and often resolved by upgrading the driver. I've used Windows ever since it first got a Registry (95) and it's never corrupted on me, ever. I lol'd at the "or improving the driver model?", as though there is ANY mainstream OS out there with a better more flexible and stable driver model than Windows has today. You've basically dug up a load of non-issues, fictional issues and historical issues and portrayed them as relevant issues in the world of Windows today. They aren't.
- pjc50 13y ago
  hose your network stack in any OS No, this is very very rare on things that aren't Windows. Lots of people say "registry corruption" when they mean "cruft"; over time apps register shell extensions and various other systemwide bits and pieces that gradually reduce UI responsiveness or break in strange ways.
  - nbevans 13y ago
    It's rare on Windows too. Only on Hacker News, on this thread, does it appear to be an issue.
    - taiki 13y ago
      https://www.google.com/#q=winsock+reset https://www.google.com/#q=winsock+reset No, it's not as rare as you think. Yes, it's because of the lousy design of the TCP/IP stack in windows.
      - nbevans 13y ago
        Yes it is. No it isn't. Yes it is. No it isn't. Repetitive much? There's nothing wrong with the network stack in Windows. NT has always had a first class network stack and they keep improving it with every release, as is normal for any modern mainstream OS. PS: That Google link I assume was provided for humour rather than any real substance. Two can play at that game: https://www.google.co.uk/?q=osx+network+reset https://www.google.co.uk/?q=osx+network+reset https://www.google.co.uk/?q=linux+network+reset+defaults https://www.google.co.uk/?q=linux+network+reset+defaults
      - taiki 13y ago
        That's resetting settings. What netsh winsock reset does is tear out DLLs, tear out various registry settings and mucks about with other system files. Clearly you have no idea what you're talking about.
        nbevans 13y ago

by taiki 13y ago

nbevans 13y ago

None of the "problems" of which you speak are actually mainstream problems. It's perfectly possible to hose your network stack in any OS. Just don't do that and you'll be fine. USB drivers, sound drivers, printer drivers, web cam drivers, etc etc, are all using user-mode drivers since Vista. They cannot crash your system. Similarly, graphics card drivers use a special model that means they can auto-restart if they were to crash; which as it happens is exceptionally rare and often resolved by upgrading the driver. I've used Windows ever since it first got a Registry (95) and it's never corrupted on me, ever. I lol'd at the "or improving the driver model?", as though there is ANY mainstream OS out there with a better more flexible and stable driver model than Windows has today. You've basically dug up a load of non-issues, fictional issues and historical issues and portrayed them as relevant issues in the world of Windows today. They aren't.

pjc50 13y ago
hose your network stack in any OS No, this is very very rare on things that aren't Windows. Lots of people say "registry corruption" when they mean "cruft"; over time apps register shell extensions and various other systemwide bits and pieces that gradually reduce UI responsiveness or break in strange ways.
- nbevans 13y ago
  It's rare on Windows too. Only on Hacker News, on this thread, does it appear to be an issue.
  - taiki 13y ago
    https://www.google.com/#q=winsock+reset https://www.google.com/#q=winsock+reset No, it's not as rare as you think. Yes, it's because of the lousy design of the TCP/IP stack in windows.
    - nbevans 13y ago
      Yes it is. No it isn't. Yes it is. No it isn't. Repetitive much? There's nothing wrong with the network stack in Windows. NT has always had a first class network stack and they keep improving it with every release, as is normal for any modern mainstream OS. PS: That Google link I assume was provided for humour rather than any real substance. Two can play at that game: https://www.google.co.uk/?q=osx+network+reset https://www.google.co.uk/?q=osx+network+reset https://www.google.co.uk/?q=linux+network+reset+defaults https://www.google.co.uk/?q=linux+network+reset+defaults
    - taiki 13y ago
      That's resetting settings. What netsh winsock reset does is tear out DLLs, tear out various registry settings and mucks about with other system files. Clearly you have no idea what you're talking about.
      - nbevans 13y ago