While hosting a website, the owner has to decide whether he wants to host his website on the Windows platform or the Linux platform. While Windows web hosting seems to be a natural choice, Linux is catching on fast all over the world.
A Windows platform does not necessarily require a Linux environment to host a website. Generally, the choice of the operating system to host your website depends upon the scripting language that is used in your website. If languages like PHP, MySQL, or Perl are used in your website, Linux is preferred. Added to this is the very high uptime rate for Linux-based servers. No wonder Linux-based web hosting is the most widely used web host in the world!
A Linux website can easily be converted to a Windows website without much hassle. Linux web hosting is very economical as Linux is a free operating system. Also, a Linux-based web server is not fully compliant with Windows technologies. If you are using any Windows-centric technologies such VB, it’s better to go for Windows-based servers.
Make the choice for an operating system for your website based on the kind of website you are about to host.
Basic Web Hosting Needs and Linux Hosting Server Advantages
Different web servers are utilized for various purpose of many website.
Web Space: Web space should be given the first importance from your end. Nowadays web host packages propose enough disk space to host your site at your budget.
Databases hosting: Hosting the database of your website is really very crucial for your budget. Security: Secured hosting plans should require for any kind of web business. All small business owners are seeking more or less web security for growing their business into their business market area through internet. Thus this issue should be checked before choosing any web hosting firm.
Support service: It is quite natural to face problems while hosting your site or it may be possible that your web server unfortunately may go down any moment. Thus you need to hire those web hosting firms who will guarantee the 24/7 customer support service to their clients.
Price: People are searching for cheap web hosting packages to host their website and this is necessary from their own view point. Thus for all small business owners Linux web hosting packages are competitively cheaper than others.
Linux web hosting is cheaper. The reason must be searched in licensing costs that are lower from Windows hosting plans and in the ability of Linux hosting servers to support higher web sites as per server ratio without compromising the quality of service.
Advantages of Linux server hosting
1. Linux web hosting packages are competitively cheaper than others hosting packages.
2. Linux web servers can hold vast web sites without negotiating the quality of service.
3. As Linux is known as open source software product it can afford less licensing cost which in turn reduces the hosting fees.
4. Linux website can easily bee converted to any Windows based site with no disturbance.
5. While using the Linux hosting you can easily access all cheaper web database systems like My-SQL database which can reduce the expenditure.
6. Inexpensive scripting language like My-SQL, PHP, Perl etc. are also accessible for your website while hosting your site from Linux server.
7. It is generally known that Linux web hosting servers are much secured than any other hosting servers. The security issue is satisfactorily organized in Linux hosting.
Deciding Between Windows and Linux Web Hosting
Linux Servers Advantages
Linux servers have been known to run for long periods of time without technical difficulties or down time being experienced, which is a considerable achievement since many Microsoft servers need to refresh and reboot their operating systems at regular intervals.
Linux installations have no known vulnerabilities in their security operating system; however, it is still considered a priority of Linux to keep their systems running with the best degree of security around.
Linux also offers its customers the added advantage of cheaper Linux based web hosting solutions. Disadvantages of Linux Servers
With every advantage of a solution, there has to be disadvantages as well, Linux hosting solutions are no exception to this rule. When choosing a web hosting provider for Linux, make sure he offers all the basics services on security, including firewall, load balance for the servers, Denial of Attack (DOS) protection.
Windows web servers
Windows web hosting solutions provide many benefits such as NET support, ASP, visual basic C++ and pearl scripts. While the choice of a web hosting provider is an individual decision, those looking for a business solution should consider the benefits and disadvantages of both windows and Linux severs before making a choice.
What’s Good About Linux Hosting?
One of the systems for websites is the Linux system. The system that we are referring to now is the operating system. So what do we know about the website system and why a Linux operating system?
A Linux web hosting is a system that is suitable for them because it is very compatible with open-source programming languages like PHP, Perl and Phython. By using a Linux system, you can synchronize with open-source nature that makes Linux hosting very good. As far as security is concern, Linux web hosting is known for its security values because it actually has a secured which is not in the network server. In the beginning, Linux operating system was very complex. As time goes by, there are many variations with the Linux system. Why Linux Web Hosting? -
The Most Popular Web Hosting
When discussing websites, servers and web hosting, one of the most frequently used phrases is “stability”. Most people immediately ask why Linux web hosting is the most popular web hosting platform, and the answer to their question is fairly complex.
Next, Linux is able to interface successfully with the major web development programs, like Apache and PHP. It generally accepts a broader range of file extensions, which is handy when accessing a server, writing pages, and utilizing “server-side” scripts, like “ColdFusion”. Another consideration about the flexibility of the Linux software is its remarkable convertibility, meaning that any Linux website is easily transferable to other operating software programs, such as Microsoft Windows.
While Linux is known to be far less vulnerable than other platforms, ultimately it is the responsibility of the web hosting company to also provide some security to their client’s sites as well.
Why Linux Hosting is gaining more presence than Windows Hosting?
Any person interested in publishing any data on the Internet requires Web Hosting. Web hosting has been around for several years now and has evolved from simple HTML pages hosting, small simple sites with a few images into full blown web based hosted applications where end users can visit a site, interact with the web site owner and even purchase goods and services all over the internet.
This choice has forced various options for web hosting now as HTML based sites work equally well on both Linux and Windows platforms.
Web hosting platforms vary from different types of operating systems. Microsoft Windows Server and Redhat Linux are just two examples and probably the most well known web hosting platforms. So, what is Windows or Linux web hosting and what are the advantages and disadvantages to hosting your web site on either Server. And why now Linux is gaining more popularity. This background of Community development and open source nature of Linux Server and backup of professional IT companies has made Linux platform more powerful, inexpensive and secured.
Apart from ASP, ASP.NET, all other major web based technologies work well with Linux. The virtually free distribution of PHP, MySQL, PERL has reduced the costs of the website hosting tremendously on Linux Server. At Sakshay, we provide both kind of hosting services but the advice to companies requiring Hosting for HTML based websites, small applications like Recipe site is to use Linux Hosting.
The menace of viruses, spamming and hacking is also quite less with Linux Hosting. Firstly, this is due to the robust architecture of Linux Server and Secondly, due to many cost effective softwares available for protection on Linux Platform.
The following are the advantages of using Linux based web server compared to Windows based web server :
Stable and Robust: Linux/Unix operating systems has traditionally been believed to be very stable and robust. A web site housed on a Linux operating system will have very high up-time (of the order of 99.9%).
Low cost of ownership: The Linux OS comes free of cost (or at very insignificant cost, usually cost of distribution). User Friendly : When it comes to web hosting, it is easy to host on Linux web servers. The process of uploading and hosting is almost same for both Linux and Windows web servers. If you want to use a Windows based tool such as Front Page for uploading a web site on to a Linux based web server, make sure that the Front Page extensions are enabled. Front Page also makes it possible to upload a web site using FTP. Note that if you select “;Front Page Extensions”; during web site design, you must enable Front Page extensions on a Linux web server also. These days, all Linux web servers are coming with installable Front Page extensions, and this should pose no problem for hosting on a Linux platform. You can use almost all types of file extensions (or scripts) when using Linux web server. Basically it means that you can host web sites that use different types of server side scripts including .cgi, .pl, .php, and .asp (with plug-in).
Easy to move between hosts : A web site designed to be hosted on a Linux based web server can be hosted on a Windows web server easily, where as the reverse is not always true. Most widely used : Linux/Unix based web hosting is most widely used compared to Windows based web hosting. A web site is dynamic. It is preferable to design a web site keeping this requirements in mind. A web site designed for compatibility with a Linux/Unix based web server meets the scalability requirement easily without making any site wide design changes.
Self Management of your website on a Linux Web Hosting Plan with Sakshay hosting is made very easy with our Implementation of the Award Winning Control Panel software by Sw-Soft called Plesk. Plesk is a web based interface to your Linux web hosting account that allows you to create e-mail addresses and mailboxes, view your web site traffic statistics, set permissions on your HTML, PHP pages, MySQL… and more. We also provide Windows Hosting with Plesk Panel.
Executive Summary by zunex based on article By Jason Gluckman, Joanna Gadel,Ricardo D Argence, L. Belenky,Ravi chamria