Article: Are You Ready for Linux 4900

Lionel Wagner

Still it just sounds like a lot of mumbo jumbo. I use both OS'es *a lot* and I just don't understand what you are talking about here at all. And believe me, I read this with the best intentions.

Try to provide an example, maybe people will understand.

Basically that's all there is too it, except that "Everyone else" is allowed to do stuff too, even grant permissions to other users, not only root can do that. In fact, "Everyone else" are the normal users, the ones you call "network users". Network users doesn't exist, actually, unless you implement NIS authentication. Various networking services may also have their own users, like samba, ftp and so on. However, when you write "network users" I suspect you mean members of the same group or something.

It is the permissions that have three levels in linux (and many other You have the owner of a resource, who has his-hers own set of permissions, then, there might be a group buttigned to the resource as well, and all users belonging to that group have a common set of permissions to that resource, and then there is everone else. Any user with write permission on a resource, be it the owner, someone in the group, or anyone else, can grant and revoke permissions for other users on that resource.

Windows has a more complicated way of organizing permissions, Access Control Lists, which I find to be a pain in the butt, but it allows for more fine-grained access controll schemes. Most os'es, including various advanced security schemes integrated as well. The ancient, original security-permission system from unix doesn't quite cut it in the enterprise world today, I'm afraid.

-- jon martin solaas