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Nowadays, there are many discussions about Linux and Windows web hosting options Today, I would like to go through the very basic things to be considered when choosing your hosting.  The very first consideration to be given are the features that would be available to you for your websites. Other considerations may that may be are cost, ease and convenience. Those aspects, which concern your websites, are the same operating system considerations to be born in mind when selecting your new service.

The vast majority of hosting services being offered today are based either on Linux or Windows. There are a few other Unix variants used in hosting companies, but for the most part the features offered to the guest website are so similar that they can be thought of as the same. For the purposes of this discussion, “Unix” systems will be lumped together and a Linux model will be considered. There may also be hosting services based on another operating system altogether, but these are few and far between. For those systems, you would have to compare their feature sets to those discussed here.

Second to the operating system, the most important influence on the features that will be available to you will be the Web Server system in use. On Linux systems, the Web Server offered is almost always the Apache server. On Windows it’s the Internet Information Server [Service], IIS. Apache is also available for Windows systems, but is not very frequently used by hosting companies using the Windows platform. Again, there are other Web Servers in use but the great majority of hosting companies use one of these two.

Linux Hosting Overview:
Nowadays most of the web designers are choosing Linux servers to host their websites. Everyday Windows is losing costumers to Linux hosting and web hosts are exploring this fact and are offering daily new promotions and Linux plans. And why are the web designers choosing Linux plans? First a short and very important advantage: the price, the web host companies usually use free editions of Linux systems like Linux Red Hat, Linux Fedora Core or even FreeBSD operating system, this fact lowers the final price for the costumer because the web hosts don’t have to pay for the server operating system. All the Linux operating systems are under the GNU license, this means that anyone can access the source code and modify it, very important to optimize the server and resolve any problem or security issue. Linux systems are the most flexible and stable servers. It’s easier to upgrade and expand a Linux Server. By default these servers are installed in text mode, the system uses fewer resources and dedicates all its power to the Web Pages hosted and not some fancy GUI with all these really neat bells and whistles that do nothing to boost the end user with sites hosted on the server.  Linux supports Perl, CGI-BIN, PHP, Shells, MySQL, PostgresSQL, MS FrontPage extensions and much more.

Windows Hosting Overview:
Everyone knows Windows! Hard to believe but it’s true that Windows is losing ground to Linux hosting. It is true that Windows is more expensive than a Linux hosting plan but Windows is still Windows!! On the flip side Widnows can support some tools that Linux cannot run. Only Windows plans support Scripting languages for dynamic content such as Active Server Pages (ASP) and ASP.NET, Active Perl and Visual C++. Only Windows hosting will run Microsoft specific applications such as MS SQL databases, MS Access Databases and IIS. This is very important and if you’re planning to use any of those languages or applications in you website, you will need to consider your options.

Analysing Your Webhosting Needs:
Linux hosting accounts are currently the most popular alternatives for anyone wishing to start a website or a blog. Nearly all internet hosting companies offer Linux hosted solutions with prices varying considerably depending on the host, server hardware and the specifications offered by each individual package. Most affordable solutions cost only a few dollars per month and these offer all the requirements anyone wanting to start a small or medium sized website will need. For more complex and feature rich options, a dedicated Linux server is definetly the best alternative.

If you don’t know whether Linux hosting is the right option for you there are a few pointers that could help in the assessment process. Many popular scripts are developed specifically or work better on Linux servers. Examples of such scripts include Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, OsCommerce and phpBB to mention only a few. These scripts are mostly developed using the PHP scripting language with MySQL database, which performs exceptionally better on Linux servers and thus explaining why most people will prefer to use Linux based hosting services.

Windows hosting solutions provide basically the same functions as their Linux counterpart except when utilizing ASP and ASP.Net that is exclusively native to Windows. Another aspect worth mentioning about Windows servers is that they are the only alternative that can run the Visual Basic and the VB Scripting language. In reality both alternatives work exceptionally well when used in distinct ways, making it very hard to determine which alternative is superior to the other, even if such a comparison is possible. When uncertain on which solution to opt for, the best practice is to research the requirements needed to host the site and only purchase the hosting account when all the details have been gathered.

Which is Better – Windows or Linux Hosting? A Comparison:
Market Share for Top Servers Across All Domains shown below

Source: Netcraft. Visit netcraft.com for more information.

Performance:
In low-stress conditions Windows and Linux servers have very similar performances but under high load Linux is believed to be superior to Windows.

Reliability:
The general consensus is that Linux is more reliable. It is believed that Linux servers have less downtime. Microsoft’s Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 (now even Windows 2007) are much more stable and reliable than previous versions, but there are still cases where a server will require a reboot to resolve an issue.

Functionality:
This is where these two platforms differ the most. There isn’t much that can be achieved using one platform that can’t be done on the other one. The main difference are the underlying technologies. For example, if you need a database driven website, you can choose either PHP/MySQL combination under Linux or ASP/MS SQL combination under Windows 2000.Security:

Out of the box, neither Linux or Windows is very secure for Internet use. A web server has to be constantly managed and security patches need to be applied to keep a server secure. But the known threats to Windows machines are much more than for Linux servers.

Price:
Linux holds an edge due to the fact that the most of the software we use is open source (free) and that it’s easier to maintain Linux servers than Windows servers for the same level of reliability and performance. In upcoming economies like India, China, Argentina, Brazil etc, price is a big issue and the low cost Linux servers are in big demand. Unless you genuinely plan to use Windows platform specific features, it probably makes sense to choose the Linux platform.

Summary:
I would say, the right question isn’t “Which one is the best – Windows or Linux?” but “Which web hosting is the right choice for your needs?” Both have their pros and cons. Whether Linux web hosting or Windows web hosting is good for you, depends entirely on your hosting needs! Nearly 99% of anything you can dream of can be done on a Linux Server!

This entry was posted on Monday, March 16th, 2009 at 3:52 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.