5.23.2012

Linux Hosting vs. Windows Web Hosting

By Michael Paige


When looking for a hosting company, you'll run into one wall right away: Do you pick a windows web hosting server or one using Linux (Unix)? The gut reaction is almost always to pick the same operating system that your personal computer is running. That decision process is unfortunately wrong.

Taking Care of the Myth.

Let us get this out of the way first: What your computer in your home or office is running has no bearing (normally) on what your web site hosting server runs. Your personal computer is set up to do a set number of tasks primarily based on the needs of your office/home environment and a website server has a completely different set of jobs.

Some people are scared that they may not be able to update or access a hosting server if it is running another operating system. Site files are, for the most part, all the same and your computer can access and update any web server using common, and usually free, tools available on the web. So rest assured you can manipulate, change and programme your hosting server from any personal computer.

Linux is generally more stable than windows on website servers. This is an opinion, but an educated one based on two decades of running servers. Windows servers are constantly being patched, repatched, updated to the point of insanity and the worst part is plenty of the patches that should update the server correctly can bring the server smashing down. Linux, when run with the right set of extensions and control panels is comparatively stable. The disk system is tailor made for the web and it can mostly be restored quicker in the event of a crash. It's also infinitely customizable while Windows is pretty strict in how and what it does.

Now, based on this, you are probably thinking that you are going to go with Linux hosting servers all the time. Not so fast. There are some specific technologies which work well on windows web servers. The most typical of these are web site pages running ASP. ASP is a high-end programming language and although Linux can be hacked to run it, it is native to Windows web servers. So if you've got to use ASP, use windows. Nevertheless we would caution you to seek out programming alternatives first if a programme tells you it must use ASP. In tons of instances there are coding languages which can be used in the place of ASP code.

What do you use for simple websites? Without question use Linux hosting servers. There is not any reason to ever host a simple site on a windows hosting server, period.

Control panels are also a huge concern. If you are doing simple web hosting, your control panel is your lifeline. We suggest using the CPANEL (WHM) control panel system and that was made for Linux platforms. It's so good at what it does that you are going to seldom even have to see the underlying code the hosting server uses and the pain of configuration will be left to a minimum. You would like to be building your web site not figuring out how to install a device driver.

One extra thing to think about is the sheer number of web hosting companies supporting Linux in opposition to Windows. Plenty of web hosting companies offer both but take some time to ask what operating system they know lots more about; the answer's always Linux. If your techs are better at something, by association you will be better served when you request technical support.




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