Do you prefer Linux or Windows server for your website?

If it came down to choosing one or the other, which would you choose?

With the Mono runtime you can run .NET apps on Linux and some other non-Microsoft operating systems.

Hee hee, it constantly amuses and amazes me the way the same stock answers come out whenever this subject is raised. People get very religious about it

My personal experience, having worked on both systems for years I don't think there's any genuine difference in speed, scalability or reliability. Sure, people will swear blind there is, but I have yet to see any hard facts that prove it one way or the other. Most of the claims are either unsubstantiated or not well tested.

Also, a significantly large amount of the "Windows is cr*p" brigade base their opinions on Microsoft as a company, not on the technical quality of the products.

And if you are renting server space, it really doesn't make any difference as the hosting company will be responsible for maintaining the servers, and they will make very sure they're up and running. You won't see a difference.

For people here, it really comes down to what you are going to do with the web space. If you are going to run a static site, then it doesn't make a blind bit of difference, period.

If you are going into scripted sites, then it depends on who's doing the scripting. If you are buying scripts for IM, then Unix (or a variation) is probably better as IMers seem to have a love for PHP and MySql. These do run under Windows, but seem to run better under Unix.

If you are writing your own scripts, then it mainly depends on what you like using. Again, I've worked extensively with both, and can tell you that there's not a lot of difference overall. Personally, I prefer ASP.NET as it comes with a huge amount of built-in features that PHP just doesn't have (as far as I can see). That doesn't mean you can't do things with PHP, but it either takes longer (as you have to write more code), or you have to install 3rd party modules to achieve what comes out of the box with ASP.NET.

Having said all that, I suspect that the number of IMers who write their own code is very small compared to the rest, so these last comments will only apply to a small minority.

Just my 2c, like everyone else

I must have missed that in the "industry standard" memo.

Unless you meant "most Warrior Forum level internet marketing people at the low end use pre-existing solutions that have been pre-written in PHP for linux" then I would sort of agree with you. But that's more of a function of getting things that they don't have to pay a lot of money for or for free because they don't have a lot of capital. It's certainly not a function of someone at the average technical capacity of the folks that frequent this forum sitting down and engineering a best-of-breed solution based on the technical merits of each functional requirement.

You'd be using compiled code instead of scripts, and database architectures with real stored procedures and functions.

It is easier to hack a windows server ....

James

I feel both will work fine but I personally prefer the cost of scalability with Linux-based systems and I'm much more comfortable with the management of Linux.

I've written .NET applications and the platform is nice to develop under but using the nice features (like LINQ to SQL or ADO.NET) require you to use somewhat expensive MS SQL Server. If it's shared hosting, that may not be a problem but if you're paying for individual licenses, that can definitely add up.

Scheduling for a web application is often easier with *nix servers. Doing repetitive maintenance on .NET requires you to use Windows' horrible "scheduled tasks". Cron is so much nicer. (And yes, I realize there are some ways you can "hack" .NET by using things like expiring system cache objects but I've found it to be very unreliable.) None of that matters much unless you need to schedule things though.

I think the short answer for me is... If I'm going to have access to the box (via SSH or some other remote login) I would prefer it to be Linux. Otherwise, it just doesn't matter because both OSs will handle the most common scripting languages (including .NET on Linux via Mono ... albeit not pretty :p)

Heh... anyone using Red Hat in a clustered environment will very quickly learn about the mandatory support contract required to download the clustering module.

but but but it's free...

I've worked in the high security environment of medical, legal, banking and insurance applications for over 10 years and I've never seen a Windows web server or server cluster in those industries compromised by a virus, even the infamous "Code Red" and "Nimda". If you treat your servers like most people treat their Windows desktops/laptops, yes, you're asking for trouble. I've seen some businesses in less security conscious areas be that stupid. However, a properly configured and maintained Windows server is quite secure.


For IM, I use LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) since it's more common in the shared hosting environment and there are more scripts available. If I'm going to build a corporate application or a web services framework, I'd go with C#/ASP.NET and either SQL Server or Oracle on the database side. I'm quite happy to use the right tool for the right situation.

If you're in the Internet Marketing world and have to ask then get yourself a bog standard Linux server running Apache (with all the trimmings) and CPanel. This is the easiest way to ensure the most "stuff" will "just work" for you in this world.

Of course nobody in their right mind would use crappy Window's servers. Personally I like to use good Windows servers.


If your Windows host suffers from a lot of downtime then it is the hosting company that is failing, not the OS.

I have to disagree with you on several points you've made in this post.

Saying that you can serve more off the same hardware because it's binary rather than interpreted ignores the fact that compiled languages generally take longer to develop in than interpreted ones. You're simply trading off cheap CPU cycles for expensive developer ones. Although that said C# and ASP.NET in general is so sickeningly fast to develop in these days that I'm not convinced by my own point necessarily

Saying that nothing beats Oracle on Red Hat for scalability and reliability is a bit of a falsehood. I'm sure it might be a couple of percentage points better in some ways but the cost is disgusting, especially when you have to deploy RAC for true scalability. No one outside of big corporates (eg banks) that are already locked in is doing this. Most new stuff that is springing up runs on sharded MySQL with tons of memcached servers and it's an order of magnitude cheaper than going Oracle/RedHat. I know naff all about scaling MSSQL so please don't think I was ignoring it, I'm just ignorant on that front.

Finally you seem to be saying that MS development talent is cheaper than PHP talent. That's simply not true. You'll find far more and cheaper PHP guys than C# guys. But that's a falsehood anyway since the guys that can actually get real work done all cost the same regardless of language (and interestingly can use just about any language anyway).

Incidently if the above comes off a bit blunt I'm sorry. I'm quite tired but really interested in getting involved in this thread before I go to bed (never a great plan).


Why do you believe that compiled code is somehow better than scripts?

If it's truly a question of how large you want to grow then you'll pretty much have to end up with a Linux based solution. I severely doubt you could build Google on Windows. The total cost of ownership argument only extends so far and Google is definitely past that point. But that said for 99.99999% of sites out there it will make no difference to your life what-so-ever. The team you have to build it will play a far greater role than the specific technologies you chose. Even if my own personal preference is to question the sanity of anyone who wants to build on Windows with Oracle

Why do you say Windows is the clearly superior choice for load balancing servers? There is an order of magnitude more load balanced services running on Linux than Windows.

But but but it is. I've run several clustered Linux environments without paying silly support contracts for the modules. RedHat is for corporates who are too scared to *not* pay fees for their stuff. Tons of distros (Debian being my poison of choice) have tons of options for such things without paying money for it.

Obviously the above ignores the level of technical skill required to do so but I'd say you need a similarly skilled admin to do it on windows as you do on Linux so the lack of licensing fees favours Linux on that one.

I don't see why the OS the server is running would have any effect on crashing the browser the site is viewed in.


No one wants to use X, we're just stuck with it because no one did a better job yet. (Geek in joke, if you don't get it please ignore me).

A few years ago this was true. MS had a pretty bad time of it, particularly with MSSQL getting exploited repeatedly but both platforms are far better now and pretty comparable as long as they are setup correctly.

If I want to host websites developed using ASP, FrontPage, ASP.NET environment, Windows Streaming Media, Access, MS SQL Server, or any of the other Microsoft's owned technologies then I choose Windows based hosting packages or servers.

Otherwise, Linux is what I prefer