Linux Community Magazine

Although advancements made in recent years towards the overall development of the web hosting industry has brought Linux and Windows hosting features much closer together, the reality is that there's still a lot to consider for today's webmaster when choosing what type of web host to use.

How Windows and Linux Work

For those unfamiliar with Windows and/or Linux, it's only fair that I provide some groundwork - so to you experts, or people who just don't care, you can skip ahead now.

In many ways, Linux and Windows are very similar. When used for web hosting, both services will interface just fine with anyone's home computer, whether they're running Windows, Linux, Apple's OS X, or just about anything else.

Despite this, some fundamental differences can't be ignored. Windows and all of its major software is developed by one company (Microsoft), which are virtually all dependent on one common core (or 'kernal'). This type of interdependence between the various parts of the server is what's called a 'monolithic' design. On a Windows home computer, examples of this sort of approach can be seen in Windows Media Player and Microsoft Internet Explorer. A Windows server typically runs webpage serving software known as IIS, which is actually integrated right into Windows too. Although the alternative Apache software that's standard on Linux servers is also available to Windows administrators, it's very uncommon that it's ever used.

This is where Linux is very different. Linux has been developed completely by what's known as the open source community - a collective effort by any talented programmer who's willing to pick up the existing Linux source code to try to improve upon it in some way. This group-oriented approach has created the perfect compliment to the monopolistic approach of Microsoft by creating an operating system made up of parts that are freely independent of one another - a 'modular' design, to oppose monolithic design, if you will.

Operating Systems and Feature Support

First, let's cover what both systems will do. Linux and Windows will each run HTML, CSS, DHTML, XHTML, XML, JavaScript, Java, CGI, Perl, and most other popular web technologies absoutely fine. E-mail, FTP, reporting, and other basic features are supported all the same, too. Conveniently, both operating systems also do an excellent job interfacing with Microsoft FrontPage

Linux excels by offering the best environment for open source development such as PHP and Ruby on Rails. Databases on a Linux hosting service typically use MySQL or PostGresSQL. Most existing applications that are open source (and on the web, that's quite a lot), seems to come better suited for Linux, or at least end up there first.

Windows excels by offering the best environment for ASP and other Microsoft proprietary applications such as Microsoft Exchange. When used on the web, databases on Windows typically rely on MS SQL.

Operating Systems and Security

The Windows VS Linux security debate is a very old one, which the nerd community will likely never agree on. The reason is simple - in the end, nothing on a computer is gauranteed secure. Some things we can't change - such as unskilled server administrators, brute-force password crackers, unsecured PHP or ASP scripts, social engineering risks in large companies, and more. In the end, these variables vastly outweigh the security risks existing within either operating system.

The most common argument against Windows security is that because of its monolithic design (mentioned previously), it is easier for hackers to compromise an entire server. For example, if a security exploit is found in the IIS web server, it could potentially be used in compromising the entire Windows server, as IIS is deeply interconnected with the core of the Windows. It's for this same reason that external browsers such as Mozilla FireFox tend to be seen as safer for a Windows PC than the integrated Microsoft Internet Explorer.

The most common argument against Linux security is exactly the largest argument for Linux security - that it's entirely open-source. With potentially the entire world with its eyes on Linux security, Linux has both the largest, most educated security team, and logically the most educated community of hackers, too.

Future Development

As if this isn't enough to soak in, we're now left to think about the future. As Microsoft has become increasingly dominated in the web hosting industry, we can expect future releases of Windows server to become increasingly like Linux with modular design; at least according to Microsoft representatives at last year's HostingCon.

In closing, if things continue on the course they're on now, it's also safe to assume that both sides will continue working to accommodate one another as much as possible, but your best bet is to pursue the type of web applications are important to you, as either side will probably be around for a long time. For open-source applications, your best choice will likely always be Linux, and for closed-source applications, Windows should remain a safe bet for years to come.

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Confusion often arises while choosing a web-hosting platform, as which one is the best one and which one is the better one between Linux & Window hosting. The million-dollar question is what application are you looking to use for your hosting? Consider the tools and scripting languages you plan to use, if you use PHP, Perl or MySQL, Linux is the way forward. If apps are Microsoft-specific, then Windows is what you need.

Well in most of the cases, the general inclination generally moves towards the Linux web hosting platform and not on the window web hosting, because there are several positive factor that affect Linux and that Linux carries with itself.

While casting our views on Linux hosting we conclude that Linux is more reliable. These are considered to be the best OS for web server. Linux web hosting are typically found to be the most stable and efficient system and as such, it is commonly used for the demanding environment of web and mail server.

Besides, reliability, cost effectiveness is also one of the most favorable factors that make Linux first choice. Generally, the Linux OS comes free of cost or at a very insignificant cost, usually cost of distribution. Also, it has full fledged server, and desk top applications that comes free along with the OS. And, these server applications being free are also very stable.

In addition, Linux web hosting is easy to use and is perfect for your plan. 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. This is only required if you are uploading using HTTP feature of Front Page on your website. Front Page also makes it possible to upload a web site using FTP. 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.

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. A web site is dynamic. Usually, a web site starts with a few pages of html and grows over a period of time to suit the customer's requirements. It is preferable to design a web site keeping these requirements in mind.

Today, Linux based web hosting is most widely used compared to Windows based web hosting. A web site designed to be hosted on a Linux based web server can be hosted on a Windows web server easily but this is not possible with the window web hosting.

Therefore the above mentioned points proves that Linux web hosting maintain a much better position than window web hosting on the server platform.

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It's Linux, Mom! Not Lennox.

Lennox is a global corporation specializing in air conditioning, heating, and commercial refrigeration. Dave Lennox helped to develop what has been described as the first riveted-steel furnace in 1895.

His "machine" having come a long way is amazing in it's own right, but it is not necessarily suited for business productivity. While it is surely compatible with outsourced services, Old Dave's Lennox may not readily lend itself to remote helpdesk or repair over the internet.

Linux, on the other hand, is a Unix-like computer operating system which not only fully lends itself to remote helpdesk, outsourced IT services, and computer repair over the internet, but can also be used to accomplish those tasks.

Unlike Lennox hardware, Linux is one of the most prominent examples of free software and open source development; its underlying source code can be freely modified, used, and redistributed by anyone (try that with Lennox).

Although it had already been around a few years, the Linux kernel was first released to the public 17 September 1991, for the Intel x86 PC architecture.

The kernel was augmented with system utilities and libraries from the GNU project to create a usable operating system, which later led to an alternate term, GNU/Linux.

Linux is now packaged for different uses in Linux distributions, which contain the sometimes modified kernel along with a variety of other software packages tailored to different requirements.

Predominantly known for its use in servers, Linux in gaining more and more popularity as a desktop operating system garnering the support of corporations such as IBM, Sun Microsystems, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Novell.

It is used as an operating system for a wide variety of computer hardware, including desktop computers, supercomputers, video game systems (PlayStation 2 and 3 for example) and embedded devices such as mobile phones and routers most if not all of which lend themselves readily to repair over the internet, outsourced repair and even remote helpdesk services.

1960ish: A computer operating system known as UNIX was conceived.

1970: UNIX was released and widely used, modified and improved by business, academia, and the government.

1984; Richard Stallman quits his job at MIT and starts working on the GNU Project.

1985: Free Software Foundation, an organization for creating and promoting free software, is founded by Richard Stallman.

The GNU manifesto, a statement by Richard Stallman advocating the cause of free software movement, is published in the March 1985 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal

1991: MINIX was written from scratch by Andrew S. Tanenbaum, a US-born Dutch professor who wanted to teach his students the inner workings of a real operating system. It was designed to run on the Intel 8086 microprocessors that had flooded the world market.

MINIX was by no stretch of the imagination a supberb operating system. But for the first time the source code was available. Anyone who happened to get the book 'Operating Systems: Design and Implementation' by Tanenbaum could get hold of the 12,000 lines of code, written in C and assembly language. For the first time, an aspiring programmer or hacker could read the source codes of the operating system, which to that time the software vendors had guarded vigorously.

Following in quick succession, Linux was first envisaged by a a second year student of Computer Science at the University of Helsinki and a self-taught hacker, Linus Torvalds. At the time it was just another hackers hobby. But from the humble Intel 386 machine of Linus that ran the first kernel, Linux has come a long way. Its most notable use now is in the field of massively parallel supercomputing clusters.

Version 0.01 is released on the Internet in September.

1992:

January: First Linux Newsgroup: alt.os.linux founded in the UseNet

April: Ari Lemmke starts the popular Linux newsgroup comp.os.linux in the UseNet

November: Adam Richter announces the release of the first Linux Distribution from his company: Yggdrasil

1993:

June: Slackware, the famous Linux distribution is released by Peter Volkerding

August: Matt Welsh releases Linux Installation and getting started: version 1

1994: Linux kernel version 1.0 is released in March.

While Lennox has several models, Linux has many more. And even though Lennox has been around a lot longer (you know Dave Lennox died in 1947), Linux has achieved between 50-80% market share of the web server, render farm, and supercomputer markets and is growing daily on desktops a feat even old Dave couldn't pull off.

So, Mom, now do you understand? Mom! Mom!

tmm

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