I don't know if Boost's intrustive containers are necessarily quite the same as an internal linked list. std::list<T> is internal but not intrustive; the difference between the three is something like…

external:

    class Node<T> {
        Node *next;
        T *item;
    }

internal:

    class Node<T> {
        Node *next;
        T item;
    }

intrusive:

    typedef T Node<T>;
    class <T> {
        Node *next;
        // members of T
    };

(Though I suppose you could consider intrusive a type of internal linked list, and the middle representation is then also a type of internal linked list ("non-intrusive"?).)

The intrusive one allows the linked list to avoid memory allocations, and hold objects that are not copy- or move-able. The Boost page has a good table on the differences[1].

I'm actually not sure how much I agree w/ the codeofhorror article. They present the difference between a std::list holding raw pointers and an intrusive list with the title "Avoiding Game Crashes…"; if you want to avoid crashes, std::list<T> or std::list<std::unique_ptr<T>> (or even a shared_ptr, if appropriate); Of course std::list<T*> is error prone!

[1]: http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_55_0/doc/html/intrusive/intr...