Re: To the OP: Wintroll FUD about alleged insecurity refuted (was: Re: Linux why?)



On Dec 8, 10:37 am, Aragorn <stry...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Friday 08 December 2006 16:02, Tony Lawrence stood up and addressed the
masses in /comp.os.linux.misc/ as follows...:

Aragorn wrote:

Enter Windows NT. A microkernel which was largely stolen from VMS, onto
which a 32-bit Windows kernel was bolted. Security was also bolted on
via the NTFS filesystem and ACL's. But this security was *clearly* only
bolted on, because Windows could still be installed on a FAT32 partition,
which doesn't support ACL's.

I so wish I could find this, but I think it's been expunged from the
Net: at one time Bill Gates said something like "Windows NT is
effectively Unix" - he was referring to the Mach kernel parts of
course..Actually, what he said was that "Windows NT is a better UNIX than UNIX". ;-)

My memory was a little different - but in any case, do you have a link
to the source of that? I've been trying to find it for years..


But Windows NT isn't UNIX at all. In fact, all NT versions have a compound
kernel, comprising of the NT kernel itself and a Win32 kernel - now a Win64
kernel for /x86-64/ of course.

Yes, of course. At the time though, Microsoft at least had some
grudging respect for the value and power of Unix (heck they even sold
Microsoft Xenix way back when). I think that's WHY he said that, but I
don't think it went over well with Marketing. I'd love to find the
source and refresh my memory of context..


The NT kernel was written by Dave Cutler of DEC - Digital Equipment
Corporation, usually just referred to as "Digital", but not to be confused
with Digital Research, who developed CP/M and who have later on released
the successful DR DOS versions.

And Helen Custer wrote a book about it - I have that kicking around
here somewhere..


But even next to VMS, NT doesn't compare. Because - as you say - they added
on a bunch of crap. And this crap was called Windows... ;-)

Well, yes. But Vista once again was a "total rewrite" - and once again
they poured the old crap back in (
http://aplawrence.com/Security/windows_vista_hooks.html cited
previously)


--
Tony Lawrence
Unix/Linux/Mac OS X Resources
http://aplawrence.com

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