I know so many people that start up almost Mom & Pop web hosting shops and always start with linux (centos lately) but never save up the cash to get around to windows hosting. Anyone want to chime in here? All I see is the money involved, no other reason. Maybe a little of "I don't think I want to learn that" but not nearly as much as "thats really quite expensive". Who here runs anything on a windows side?

(For once I find myself asking who runs windows, I feel a little dirty now)

I Personally use centos Cpanel Is Why i Choosed it and my host doesnt have cpanel for windows. Is it compatible ?

I think that this is a far more complex issue than just the cost involved Shockym. The *nix hosting platforms have, throughout hosting history had the best record for security and stability. There has always been such a good reputation that I think that is why many go that route.

This depends on what you are hosting, although *nix is an excellent choice.

Agreed. I really depends on what your requirements are. Needing ASP is a good example. While you can run ASP on Linux with certain modules, it's not always 100% functional, so it would be best to use Windows server.

While it might be good through out history I still see a ton of people ask about ASP and cold fusion. I think there is a market for it, but for some of the smaller companies starting out there they just dont have the money up front to get into something like that, nor do we really know the full market potentional for it since so many still use nix. Good points too.

It's funny how popular popular Linux is in this kind of field, especially when you compare it to how much more the Windows operating system is used by regular users.

Linux does make an excellent server choice though, and I guess that's why so many people jumped on the nix band-wagon for this. Plus, there is the cost difference involved and other factors.

Windows has usability as a factor to make it popular, but few people who are running servers need that as a factor. I think that the general geek level of the people who run servers has a lot to do with the fact that *nix is used-because they ARE harder to work with, but the benefits of learning to do so are huge.

Let's face it there aren't many mom and pop's out there who will be running a server center.

The core difference between linux and windows hosting servers is essentially the web engine. Linux runs Apache and windows runs IIS (Internet information server). The web engine's primary role is to interpret your web site code and then provide your rendered web site to the end user.

The windows web engine, IIS, has native support to render Microsoft programming code. The linux web engine, Apache, will render most other code, except Microsoft programming code. Both web engines will render most web sites without any problems.

So true so true, but on the note of the nix band-wagon I think its just been around so long and so many adapted to it, it just stuck.

And you can bet your hard drive that one day I will be old and walking around in my own DC.........mmmmmmmm the smell of servers in the morning.

I think it comes down to the fact that Linux cuts costs. As a business, one of your main goals is to cut costs.

Linux also tends to be easier to manage from a hosting point of view.

Just to clarify here, rendering a web page for the end-user is the role of the browser, not the web server. I believe you are talking about interpreting scripting languages such as PHP or ASP into HTML that is then sent to the browser client. Technically, this is usually done by the compiler program, and is just facilitated by the server software (not sure with IIS and MS languages)- the job of an HTTP server is really just to the read the requested files off the hard drive and send them to the requester. In the case of a CGI script, PHP file, etc, there is an intermediate step. The server sends the file to an external process for interpretation/compilation/execution first, then sends the output to the client.

I don't have any experience running ASP.NET or any Microsoft technologies on Apache in Linux (using Mono I assume), but if I were a hosting company, I would definitely use Windows Server for running ASP or CF; perhaps virtually on a Linux host, for the reliability and stability of *nix.. sort of best of both worlds. Apache, of course, can run on Windows, but I'm not sure how it handles ASP and all that.

Many web hosts just trust Linux, because it has served them well in the past.

After all, why fix something if it isn't even broken? Not to mention there is the cost difference, and the fact that most web hosts (as Shock already mentioned) are practically computer geeks as a prerequisite.

Needless to say, I do not expect anything to change in the near future.

Exactly.

I think you see hosting companies offer Windows solutions as well as Linux when they start to get larger.

I agree James. A large part of the problem is cost; not just the cost of Windows licenses vs free Linux, but generally there are Unix/Linux/Open Source people, and Microsoft people, without a lot of crossover. So you either need people who know both, or two sets of techs to handle it, which costs money. I think that's why Windows hosting is usually added later, after the company is profitable and can afford it.

Linux hosting is generally first, probably because of people starting hosting companies being geeks, as someone mentioned, because the OS is cheaper and arguably more secure and versatile, and because *NIX has historically dominated the internet server market.