Is NIS (Network Information System) still up to date?

Question

linux

In some distributions , you can still find lines in nsswitch.conf :

passwd compat

What does it say about using NIS file name resolution.
So is it possible to abandon this legacy already?
And what are the possible consequences?

Answer 1

More than up to date.
Here is some copy-paste (because I am lazy to write what is already painted):

nsswitch.conf - configuration file for system databases
and name service switcher
Linux libc5 has support for NYS, while glibc 2.x
(libc.so.6) provides a simpler and more efficient solution to
this problem. It was implemented based on the method
used by Sun Microsystems in the Solaris 2 C library.
We followed this example and named this scheme "Name
Service Switch" (NSS). The sources of the "databases" and the order in which they
are looked up are specified in the /etc/nsswitch.conf file.
The following databases are supported in NSS:
aliases, ethers, group, hosts, netgroup, network, passwd, protocols, publickey, rpc, services, shadow.
The /etc/nsswitch.conf file might look something like this
(this content is also used by default if
/etc/nsswitch.conf is missing):
passwd: compat
group: compat
shadow: compat
hosts: dns [!UNAVAIL=return] files
networks: nis [NOTFOUND=return] files
ethers: nis [NOTFOUND=return] files
protocols: nis [NOTFOUND=return] files
rpc: nis [NOTFOUND=return] files
services: nis [NOTFOUND=return] files