Windows vs Linux

The vast majority of hosting services being offered today are based either on Windows or Linux operating systems. There are few other Unix variants that hosting companies use, but most of the features that are offered to the customer are so similar that they can be considered to be the same.

The decision to choose one web hosting system over another is usually determined by what type of scripting languages you need.

When comparing Windows and Linux, there are many rumors you may have heard about why one is better than the other. In reality, there are several things that are virtually the same whether you choose Windows hosting or Linux hosting:

Features that will be available for you are not solely decided by the operating system. Therefore you have to think about the web server system that is commonly deployed on Windows and Linux. For example, on Linux systems, the web server offered is almost always the Apache server.

On Windows, it is the Internet Information Server (IIS). Apache is also available for Windows systems but is rarely 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.

The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) provides a means to connect or link from a web page to a program written in a scripting language that runs on the server.

Some people refer to a CGI Script when what they actually mean is a shell script accessed via the CGI. Shell scripts are files containing a series of commands to be executed by the Unix shell. They are, therefore, a feature of a Unix or Linux system.

Other types of scripts accessed via the CGI include PERL scripts. PERL is readily available for either Linux or Windows. It is included by default in almost every Linux distribution and is an add-on to Windows. As a very powerful and popular scripting language, it is available on most hosting service systems.

Most hosting companies these days will have made PHP available on their systems no matter which platform they offer. However, it is still something you will want to check if you have any plans to use it.

I have not personally tested the capabilities of the Linux ASP implementations, so I can not advise you how compatible they may be.

It holds great potential for the future of the web, providing features that greatly extend the capabilities that web developers can offer to their clients. A decision to utilize ASP or ASP.NET may be a deciding factor for you in the choice of platform you look for in a hosting company.

It is a member of the Microsoft Office suite of applications, thus only available for Windows.

Large database systems such as SQL Server and Oracle can be accessed through interfaces such as Open Database Connectivity (ODBC). There are also ODBC connections to such a system as the IBM AS/400, which is fairly common in medium-sized businesses.

Interfaces that are fairly specialized are more commonly available on Windows systems, and in the offerings of hosting, companies are usually special requests or custom solutions. If you have a need for such a connection, you will need to talk to the potential hosting service representatives.

Recent advances in operating systems, and especially in the areas of interoperability, have brought the available feature sets of Windows and Linux-based website hosting offerings much closer to each other. Where in the past, there have been cut-and-dry advantages to one over the other for particular applications.

These differences have now diminished to the point where the choice of operating system a hosting service company makes is frequently not a concern to the client but a preference. With a few exceptions, as noted above, you can choose which one of the operating systems fits your needs better and go with it!