Advantages & Disadvantages of Linux Hosting and Windows Hosting

[sanderson]

Linux Website Hosting is considered to be the best type of hosting solution by many.

Of course there are known advantages of Linux web hosting, it provides reliability, reasonability, security, efficiency, and much more.

Considering all the benefits or advantages do you think there are any disadvantages too for hosting on Linux servers that one must know before deciding between Linux and Windows hosting?

[harry]

Though linux web hosting is considered as the best solution for hosting but there are some hindrances to be considered. One of the main disadvantages of Linux based hosting is that they are unable to accommodate some windows applications and the coding conversions.

Think if your current site is hosted for windows IIS and now you want it on linux server, you will have to use all cumbersome conversions or recode entire site, much frustrating job.

[Rodney]

Advantages:
Linux hosting uses open source software. It gives you multiple options for hosting requirements. Linux hosting is compatible with PHP which is considered to be one of the most popular languages for programming.
Linux hosting is good for practicing programmers as they can keep testing new things with it. That’s the biggest advantage of using Linux.
Linux hosting is very cheap and affordable. Over head expenses are reduced in Linux as proprietary softwares are not installed.

Disadvantages:
Linux hosting is not compatible with windows applications and the coding conversions. It can be a serious issue with websites that are designed for windows based application. This is considered to be the major disadvantage.

[Martin]

Advantages of windows hosting:
Windows hosting is provided by Microsoft. By using windows hosting you will get regular support and updates. One of the major advantages of using windows hosting is that majority of the people who use windows as an OS on the computer find it to be user friendly. You get an option of using popular Microsoft tools such as MS FrontPage, MS Access and MS SQL.

Disadvantages of windows hosting:
Windows hosting generally requires a lot of system resources like a very powerful machine to run it. It lacks server stability which is known to everyone. It requires reboot more frequently. Most of the products needed are of Microsoft so additional investment is needed for development tools which is more expensive. You won’t get too many free applications with it.

[kev woodman]

I do love it when people start bandying about comments regarding server stability. Anybody have any recent benchmarks for server performance on a like for like hardware basis?

Has anyone actually run a site on a Windows server that they have chosen to move because the box was unstable? I'd argue that the overriding reason for the popularity of Linux hosting is price and price alone and the popularity of IIS has grown substantially recently, a trend that is likely to continue as more developers start using the free IDEs available from MS.