Linux is normally the first to adopt new things such as IPv6, and is inherently more secure.-Kamel
How is linux "
inherently more secure" than NT? The NT-style ACL based permissions (based on what VMS had) are a
lot more flexible than traditional *u*x user/group style permissions, and both linux and BSD have tried copying that during the last few years, but it still isn't a "standard" feature supported by all distros. As for the security aspect, what makes linux "more secure"?
NT can run with limited user accounts (and people have been doing that since the early 90es) - it's a shame there's a lot of poorly written software that wants administrative privileges, but that really is the fault of uneducated programmers who haven't been adhering to the rules Microsoft have outlined in their documentation.
If you disagree yourself, then why does Windows Vista try to implement new administration features which mirror that of the way Linux has worked from its outset?-Kamel
The only feature I can think of that you could be referring to is UAC, and that isn't really equivalent to anything linux had has since "it's outset". You could argue that UAC is just "sudo" (which it is indeed similar to), but it's more than that as well.
While Windows has more or less been on a model of personal computer 1 account 1 user etc. Sure it has multiple user accounts, but support for multiple users and multiple access privileges on a PC are very weak, especially when compared to strong user systems such as any *NIX style OS.-Kamel
NT's user/group/permission system is actually a lot stronger and more flexible than what *u*x traditionally had, the big flaw is that Win9x was allowed to live beyond Win95, and that it took until Vista to make the default user account non-administrative. Because of this, a lot of crappy programmers (hobbyists as well as professionals) have made too many assumptions, and made it
harder to run as a non-administrative user (or without having a lot of UAC pop-ups on Vista). Some of that can be fixed by modifying NTFS and registry ACLs, though.
Quickly stated, my opinion is that in many ways Linux is better (and therefore is overall *better*),-Kamel
You just haven't pointed out any areas where linux is actually better, though
IMHO having an open-source kernel is a nice thing, and I wouldn't mind if Windows had that. Open-source drivers are also nice, although I don't see that as an absolute necessity (I can understand why nvidia and AMD/ATI want to guard at least part of their drivers - R&D costs a lot of money). I also certainly wouldn't mind having a much more modular and flexible operating system (the NT kernel itself allows for quite a deal of flexibility, but the OS install doesn't).
On the other hand there's a lot of things about linux I'm not a fan of. Like that lack of a unified configuration format (/etc/messy-files-with-a-zillion-formats instead of the registry), a pretty incoherent filesystem layout, the horrible X Windowing system (and the horrible X11/XOrg implementations of it, please do move graphics drivers to the core OS with proper kernel support), etc...
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