Windows NT vs. Unix: A design comparison by Julio Merino
blogsystem5.substack.com/p/windows-nt-vs-unix-design
What Jamie wrote
I enjoyed this read comparing the designs of Unix and Windows NT.
NT was groundbreaking technology when it launched. As I presented above, many of the features we take for granted today in systems design were present in NT since its inception, whereas almost all other Unix systems had to gain those features slowly over time. As a result, such features don’t always integrate seamlessly with Unix philosophies.
Today, however, it’s not clear to me that NT is truly “more advanced” than, say, Linux or FreeBSD. It is true that NT had more solid design principles at the onset and more features that its contemporary operating systems, but nowadays… the differences are blurry. Yes, NT is advanced, but not significantly more so than modern Unixes.
It is particularly interesting how much NT got right, but Unix was able to catch up and ultimately the power of an open-source multiparty ecosystem won out.