Scott,
A couple small corrections in the interest of accuracy.
Windows was by no means designed "before network cards." However, installing a functional network card on a DOS machine was a true PITA--been there, done that, lost the t-shirt years ago. For one thing, there was an extremely limited amount of memory for the network drivers. To try to work around that limit, there were some rather interesting memory management programs, the most popular of which was called QEMM from Quarterdeck Software. In those days, Microsoft hadn't much of a clue about serious memory management--some of their "innovations" came from some long conversations with some of the Quarterdeck people, in fact.
Windows was indeed designed as a single user system--Bill Gates was famously late to the party in recognizing the force that the Internet would become.
The essential design of Windows NT was not that bad on a theoretical level. Its chief architect was Dave Cutler, who had been the guiding manager for the development of VMS when he was at Digital Research. The basic design of NT was similar in concept. VMS has been one of the very best operating systems in regard to computer security, by the way. The similarities of design caused some software gurus to refer to NT as "portable VMS" when it was in development.
However, the difficulty with Windows has been in the unwillingness of Microsoft to abandon the huge base of existing software by moving to a non-compatible architecture. Thus, programs continued to have the ability behind the scenes to escalate their own access level, all the way up to system access--which is the internal level of access even more basic than that of the primary user. That problem persists to the present, although it is drastically improved in Windows 7 (and Windows Vista, although the implementation of UAC there was far too intrusive in many respects).
Linux did not "become a UNIX-like system"--it was designed that way from the beginning. The GNU utilities already existed. Linus understood clearly that the missing piece of the GNU project was the lack of a kernel, so he wrote the Linux kernel with full intention of supporting the GNU stuff that already existed. (The GNU people had at that time been working on their kernel for some time--which did not appear for some years after Linux did. That was called the Hurd, by the way).
Initially, the problem was that Linux wanted to use UNIX on his personal computer, but the various versions at that time were far too expensive. He used a teaching UNIX-like system at school (called Minix) but that was too limited for what he wanted to accomplish. He also wanted to learn about kernel design--so he started the Linux kernel and made it public some months later through a rather famous public post--I think on Usenet. This is why initially he used Minix-compatible file structures, by the way.
The original poster is a bit confused about Windows architecture, too. Windows 2000 was based on NT. XP was a further evolution of the same basic architecture--as was Vista and now Win 7. While much has been changed over those years, the requirement of being backwards compatible means that a surprising amount of the basic framework persists. XP was no less secure than Windows 2000 or NT; quite the opposite, in fact. However, over all those years many exploits were developed.
David
--- In LINUX_Newbies@yahoogroups.com, Scott <scottro@...> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 06:46:59AM -0000, Rob wrote:
>
> > >From reading replies here this is what I understand tell me what is right or wrong or if I do not understand some thing.
> >
> >
> >
> > 1 Unix ,Linux and Mac has a protected Kernel not like windows and all admid are not really true admid in Unix ,Linux and Mac .
>
> Hrrm, not quite right. Windows was designed, more or less, as a single
> user system, before network cards. The problem with this, although it
> has greatly improved over the years, is that many things still either
> require or grant administrative access.
>
> Linux in the early days, was more of a unix-y clone. Unix was designed
> from the get-go to be a multi user system, only allowing administrative
> access when necessary.
>
>
> >
> > 2 Linux and Mac is base of Unix .
> >
>
> No, quite incorrect. Linux was originally simply a kernel, that is,
> more or less hardware drivers (over simplificiation, but close enough),
> to enable people to use Unixlike stuff on less robust systems. Then,
> mixed with a lot of software, a great deal of it from the Gnu people, it
> became a Unix like system. The overused analogy is that of a car--Linux
> itself, the kernel, is like the chassis and perhaps the engine, whereas
> all the additional software is like the steering wheel, brakes, and the
> like.
>
> Apple, due to its immense financial resources, is actually an official
> Unix, that is certified as allowed to use the Unix trademark. Its
> kernel is, if I remember correctly, mach or darwin, and its userland,
> that is, the stuff similar to the bash shell that you see in Linux, is
> modified BSD. Both Linux and the current Apple can be said to have
> derived from Unix, albeit indirectly--hrrm, inspired by Unix might be a
> better term. :)
>
> >
> > 3.windows NT and windows 2000 was more secure OS almost has good has Unix at the time.
> >
>
> No, because again, you had the trouble that Windows was originally based
> on a single user system, so many vulnerabilities still existed and
> exist. They were more secure, however, than Windows 95, but the
> browser, Internet Explorer, still had much too much access to the O/S.
>
> They are all still more vulnerable to malware--in addition, as the vast
> majority of computer users use Windows, the vast majority of malware
> writers aim at Windows--there is some truth that one reason all the
> malware is from Windows is because they are the biggest target, but they
> do also seem to have more easily exploitable vulnerabilities than Linux,
> Unix, and Mac. However, I don't know enough about system architecture
> to be able to say more than the vast majority of malware is written for
> windows. There are certainly takeovers, sometimes noticeable, of Linux
> run websites.
>
>
> > 4.windows NT /windows 2000/ windows XP make use of a account user of levels of permission for user by the admid
> >
> I'm not sure what you mean. They do allow for granular permissions,
> and, on the Active Directory level at least, sometimes more easily and
> more efficiently than Linux/Unix, which will require some googling and
> studying to get the equivalent of some point and click stuff.
>
>
> > 5.DOS , windows 2x ,windows 3x and windows 9x had no security at all has evey thing ran has one user with full admid mode.
> >
>
> Pretty much, as I remember. You needed a password though.
>
>
>
> > 6.Even secure OS windows NT and windows 2000 also windows XP malware can still make it way out of the user account profile and infect system files .
> >
> > This cannot happen in Unix ,Linux and Mac it cannot leave the account profile .
> >
>
> Meh, cleverly written software might be able to do so, especially if it
> could grab the password and run sudo, which will use a user account
> password that may be quite weak.
>
> Still, if you're going to questionable sites, you're often much better
> off using Linux. I've chuckled, watching an error message pop up that
> some exe couldn't be installed.
>
> --
> Scott Robbins
> PGP keyID EB3467D6
> ( 1B48 077D 66F6 9DB0 FDC2 A409 FA54 EB34 67D6 )
> gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys EB3467D6
>
> Spike: Ahhhh, my head. I think I'm sobering up. It's horrible.
> Ah... God... I wish I was dead.
>
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