[for-q-clinton]

wasn't it you that said Linux was using a 4 character salt? It may have been someone else.

But what size salt does the typical Linux build use?

[antiRepublicrat]

wasn't it you that said Linux was using a 4 character salt? It may have been someone else.

Someone else. But even four characters would make it harder. Microsoft not salting its passwords was completely inexcusable, as they knew the concept existed, and had been used in UNIX for years before they thought to design NT.

But what size salt does the typical Linux build use?

It depends on the distro, but MD5 with an 8-character salt is pretty much what everybody recognizes as good. Crypt() with a two-character salt went out long ago, only used on very old UNIXes.