Linux Community Magazine

Linux hosting has become very popular in recent times. Worldwide, in excess of 60% of internet servers now use the Linux operating system and, starting from its very humble start in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's "mass collaboration and free software" undertaking of the mid 1980s, Linux has expanded to become the world's dominant hosting solution.

The Linux operating system is actually an open source software collaboration project. Under the terms and conditions of the Linux GNU General Public License, all the source code that makes this particular operating system work may be readily modified by absolutely everyone.

The "open source" approach to code advancement has permitted application writers from across the globe to contribute to the development and evolution of this distinctive operating system. This perspective contrasts dramatically with organizations like Microsoft, who still protect jealously the secrets of all their primary systems and products. Lots of experts predicted the open source approach to software development would inevitably result in terribly bloated software which was riddled with flaws and inconsistencies. The truth is, the opposite has turned out to be true and Linux has proved to be an exceptionally stable and well-designed operating system.

Internet hosting firms very quickly realized that providing Linux hosting could provide them with many clear advantages. It's an inexpensive operating system to own and replace. It is really straightforward to set up, work with and maintain. It's powerful, stable, dependable and secure. And, most importantly, when the nearly inevitable variety of alterations and customizations are needed, the open character of the Linux project has ensured that a really wide range of skilled individuals and organizations are freely available.Many of the benefits that Linux offers hosting providers also are very important for webmasters and web developers. Outstanding reliability means that hosting firms running Linux-based systems will usually have exceptional (in other words, extremely low) down time figures, and their hosting systems tend to be extremely resistant to virus attack. The latter is mainly because virus writers still tend to focus on Windows operating systems, and this natura lly may change in the long term future. Nevertheless, for the moment, hosting security is nevertheless a major advantage for Linux-based systems.

Even so, possibly the most important weapon in the Linux armory is the flexibility this system gives web developers to exploit other, highly popular, open source products including MySQL, XML, Python and PHP. All of these applications have grown in popularity together with Linux. The control and integration possibilities built into Linux have helped make it the obvious solution for both hosts and developers wanting to exploit these potent open source products.

As a final point, almost all Linux hosting systems now include the greatly popular cPanel control panel. It's probably this user-friendly interface, more than any other, that has proved to be the Linux killer application.