Technicalities

• Both NT and Unix have lots of similarities in design and capability (more later)
• Both multithreaded - can deliver text and graphics - both give applications a protected virtual address space
• Both support multiple CPUs - both run on multiple platforms
• Both support advanced file systems with long filenames
• Both offer powerful peer file sharing and other network services
• However, also LOTS of differences :
• NT provides a strict control over OS and APIs (application programming interfaces - i.e. interfaces offered to applications via the OS)
• NT lets developers target 32-bit software to Win3.1 and Win95
• Unix has an edge in distributed resources - with the ability to share applications, files, printers, modems, and remote procedures across LAN and WAN connections
• Unix E-mail is the Internet standard, and TCP/IP networking is more mature in Unix
• However, NTs native file-sharing method is generally faster and more efficient than NFS
• NT can easily serves files and printers to Windows, Windows 95, and Macintosh clients without requiring optional software
• Unix requires special software for this : such as Samba, PC-NFS etc

 
• Sharing Applications
• File and Printer Sharing
• Large Applications : Databases
• Popular Applications : The Internet