Ok guys I bet a lot of us that are newbies wonder what the difference is with Windows and Linux hosting, right? Well I have started this thread so that our more knowledgeable babblers can give us some insight in the matter. So please fellow babblers post your opinions, thanks.

I asked my son what he thought the difference was and he said about 50 bucks .

That is one difference the cost of a windows server is often more expensive.

The major difference in my opinion is the security. You don't need to install antivirus software on a linux server and unless the server is very badly set up no hacker can get root access into the linux core.

Software for linux is often open source and free to download.

If windows and IIS are any good why are some pro-windows sites running apache/linux ?


Bob

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Yeah I thought about security also. I think Linux stays up to date on security better than Windows and the fact is that Linux is like a strong box. I personally have Ubuntu 8.10/Vista on my dual booting Dell Laptop and it´s great having a ton of free software at your fingertips. I think it costs more to update a Windows server therefore it is more expensive. Aside from ASP.NET technology I think a Linux server does everyhting better.

First, there is one thing that is not different. Neither has anything to do with the operating system on your computer. Many new folks think they have to have linux operating system on their computer to use linux hosting so try to find windows hosting thinking it means that the hosting system relates to the windows operating system on their computer. There is no relationship. In particular, windows on your computer works perfectly well with linux hosting and is indeed the usual practice.

As to the software issue, windows hosting is basically designed to support ASP.net and other Microsoft programs (spelled $$$$$). Linux is aimed at supporting php and MySQL and other open source programs (these are top notch programs and spelled "free"). That doesn't mean they don't support anything otherwise, but you have to check.

There are many other advantages to using linux hosting. Bob has given a good indication of them.

One specific thing that I have found is quite significant. Windows hosting does not support .htaccess. (This is my experience, I won't say it is impossible for a host to arrange it somehow, I'm not sure if they can or not.) This means you cannot set your computer to use .html or .htm or anything else but .shtml files and use includes. This in turn means that you must name all your files with .shtml extensions at the least.

Since this is a basic article primarily for beginners, let me note that includes are codes that insert files into your page code. For example, you can write your navigation in one file and "include" it with one line of code into all your pages. If you want to add an item to your navigation you add it to the one include file and it is automatically done for your whole site rather than having to edit it into every page individually. This is an important technique to learn and use.

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I don't think it's possible with IIS but with Apache (running under WAMP) it is easy to set up.

I'm not too sure exactly how I did it (my brain cells are slowly fading) but it something to do with uncommenting "LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so" in the Apache httpd.conf file.

Here is a how to do it page: http://www.avnetlabs.com/php/apache-...ite-on-windows .

Regards

Bob

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Gee James that was some good info, just wish I could understand it better. I´ll have to Google it up now.

A Windows server requires a lot more programming knowledge than with Linux, since you would probably be coding in .Net (VB.Net or C#) for Windows and PHP for Linux.

I use IIS at work, but my blog is hosted on a Unix server.

You can change the file types on a Windows server, but you need to go into IIS to easily do this. By default it looks for a HTML (.htm) file, but you can use ASP (.asp) or a .Net web application (.aspx). Many options can be set within IIS, including directory security, compression, and log files. .Net is great if you will be developing a large web application, since you can have multiple versions of an assembly (compiled DLL code) installed on a single server. This way if you have multiple application using different versions of a DLL, all will still be able to run. In terms of databases, Windows boxes would probably use SQL Server 2005 instead of MySQL.

I am just starting to get my head around MySQL and PHP, but it is easier to use since it only deals with text files. Most of the options you can easily change by simply opening the .htaccess file in a text editor. The only complicated part is understanding what is in the file.

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Although I tried to be as clear as possible it isn't easy to follow all of this stuff.

Let me try to simplify what is at the heart of this. In order to use the simple "include" statement, which is a one line code you put into your html telling the browser to insert a separate file such as a header or navigation, you have to tell the server to allow it. This requires you to have a little file in the root folder of your server named .htaccess. Windows servers do not support this, at least as a rule.

A linux based server does support this. After you put this brief .htaccess file into your root folder at your host you would just use a line like this inserted into your html where you want the content of the external file to be placed:

<!--#include virtual="/includes/header.html" -->

This would insert a file named header.html found in a folder named "includes" into your page.

For complete, and I think fairly easy to follow instructions see:

http://www.perlscriptsjavascripts.co...howto/ssi.html

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Webmasters are selecting OS according to the site script and nature.. if us e any MS DB or script windows is better.. but for other script like PHP db like mysql.. or static site better Linux..Linux is more cheaper than windows... But me suggest if have budjet go for windows.. will work all MS product,PHP, mysql etc...

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