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Linux Hosting>>What are the advantages of Linux hosting

Web hosting article details.

Linux Hosting: Advantages
Written by wwwhostingdirectory.com

One of the first decisions you have to make regarding web hosting is what you want your platform to be. The choice will be between Windows and Linux. Each has its advantages and its disadvantages, but about eighty percent of websites are hosted on a Linux platform – you don’t need a Linux Operating System to host your website on Linux. If so many people use it, there must be good reasons, after all! So let’s take a look at what Linux hosting, commonly referred to as Red Hat Linux, has to offer.

Linux servers are much faster, more efficient and much more stable than Windows servers. It is much more dependable and much more likely to give you less downtime than if you host on a Windows server. Speed and efficiency are two of the most important factors while choosing a platform for your website. Linux also scores high on security. One common concept you will come across is that Linux will work well if you are a beginner and you don’t want to run too many applications. If you want to have a website with basic HTML pages, Linux is a great option, but not if you want to run a lot of dynamic applications. This is not really true. The acronym LAMP stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. Many of the websites that get the most traffic use LAMP as their platform.

Linux is open source – it is basically free, except for the distribution charges. This means that you can significantly cut the cost of hosting a website. You will also see that some very common and useful applications will come free with Linux hosting, like HTTP Server, FTP, File Server, DNS Server and more. This is not the only implication of Linux being an open source Operating System. This also means that you can customize Linux to your needs – you can have your tailor made platform to host your website. This also means that there are program’s being written constantly for Linux, and that you have a lot of choice within the Linux platform, even if you don’t for some reason want to customize it for yourself.

One major factor to consider while deciding which platform to choose is the script you want to run on your website. Interactive websites usually use ASP, PHP or Perl. ASP is meant for Windows, while PHP and Perl are meant for Linux. PHP and Perl can give you anything that ASP can, and they are again open source, unlike ASP. This means that they are constantly being improved. If you would like to run PHP or Perl, Linux is definitely the platform for you.

Linux web hosting plans also have FrontPage extensions, control panels and HTML serving protocols written in. These three are just examples – the list is actually at least a mile long!

The ease with which Linux can be handled is a point of dispute, but most people who work on Linux say that it is extremely easy for beginners to grasp and handle. It is also a good option whether you want a small personal website or whether you want to run an online business with a lot of traffic. In fact, Linux systems are much more reliable with handling traffic than Windows systems are. It also uses less of your hardware resources – you can do a lot more with less if you opt for Linux web hosting.

However, there are certain things you must be aware of. If you want to run MS applications, you can still use Linux, but some MS applications are not supported on the Linux platform, like MSSQL. There are alternatives for most of these applications that will run on Linux, usually better options because they are open source, and you can make your website the best it can be with these options.



If you found this hosting article informative you may also like to read:

:: Why use Linux hosting
:: What are the advantages of Linux hosting

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