To be honest, a lot of kernel features need other programs on a user-level, to do anything usefull, so this article is not only about the kernel, but also about the userspace software to turn that kernel features to anything usefull.
Another note: We shouldn't forget, drivers for Windows are usually supplied by the hardware-vendors. Out of the box, Windows doesn't support that much hardware.
In the Linux kernel however, all drivers are included "out of the box". This means, the drivers are tested for Linux, and found stable by the "Linux kernel" team. After that, they are added to the linux kernel, to be used by everybody.Innovation in Linux: An extraordinary Linux review