How is Novell more secure or securable than NT? Comparing an OS to a networking system, strikes me as unproductive; people run Novell on servers, not desktops. NT can run a 32 bit API on several 64 bit flavors of hardware, it is multitasking and multithreaded... comparing it to Novell is apples and oranges.

actually, NetWare has a 32-bit API, runs on 64-bit hardware (maybe, they have a SPARC version and may have a PA version, but I haven't kept up), is multitasking and multithreaded. Most people don't think of NetWare as a Real OS(*tm), but it is QUITE robust. You could put it on someones desk, but it doesn't run windows. The main reason it's primarily a server OS is because Novell markets it that way. What is really cool about NetWare that has more cypherpunks relavance than most of this thread is that it has built-in support for single point network logins via RSA authenticated certificates (the inital password exchange is encrypted with RSA as well). This has been a feature for about 2 years now and is, as far as I know, the only major operating system that has native support (at all levels of the OS - not a Unix with kerberos thrown in) for such a thing out of the box. NetWare has a much more sophisticated security system than any Unix I've seen or heard about. My only complaint against Novell here is they think details about the security system are a big secret (such as RSA key lengths and the specific PRNG and hashing algorithms used). Pretty typical corporate mentality at work... While they may use RSA, it is my understanding that Novell in the past has used weak home-grown hashing and encryption algorithms for password storage. andrew