Linux hosting traces its birth from ‘Linux’, an open-source computer operating system based upon the concept of free software available to anyone to freely use, improve, modify and even redistribute. Windows hosting, on the other hand, relates to Windows operating system wherein the software is proprietary item of Microsoft.

Since being an open-source operating system, Linux hosting tends to be cheaper than Windows hosting. Besides, Linux hosting is considered as one of the main pillars of the LAMP server-software combination - Linux, Apache, MySQL and Php/Perl/Python. Popularity of Linux hosting among web developers can be judged from the fact that a great many open-source software have been created and are being continuously created for free use among discerning web enthusiasts. Whether one chooses Linux hosting or Windows hosting will to a great extent depend on what the webmaster proposes to do with his website. Here is a quick rundown of both Linux hosting and Windows hosting.

Linux Hosting

Linux hosting is a good choice if you consider that you have perpetual options of using open-source software for your hosting needs. Linux hosting would mean that the operating system is fully compatible with PHP, which is steadily becoming the most popular programming language.
It is important to remember that Linux is a breeding ground of practicing programmers all over the globe and innumerable applications are being authored, re-written and tested all the time. What this means in simple terms is Linux hosting will always keep the door open to let in fresh air of new discoveries. For an avid user, nothing beats Linux hosting in this aspect.

The other advantage with Linux hosting is that it is cheap. Why? Since most application software are free to install and use, the hosting cost is reduced to only maintenance of servers. Since proprietary software are not installed, many overhead expenses are avoided in case of Linux hosting. This enables hosting providers to pass on the cost-advantage to its customers of Linux hosting.

Here are some examples of popular open-source application software, mostly in PHP, that can be easily used in Linux hosting.

Ecommerce Shopping Cart : OS Commerce, Zen-Cart
Content Management System : Drupal, PHP-Nuke, Mambo
Blog : Wordpress, Nucleus CMS
Photo Gallery : 4Images, Coppermine

Windows Hosting

Windows hosting makes use of Microsoft’s proprietary Windows software for the host server. In contrast with Linux hosting, Windows hosting allows integration primarily with Microsoft’s own products and services. For example, if you plan dynamic web content, you have to use ASP (Active Server Pages) or the advanced ASP.NET as your programming language, both created by Microsoft to be linked to SQL databases.
Interestingly, if you choose MySQL as your database, you may opt for either Linux hosting or Windows hosting, but in case your choice for database is MS Access, your option is only Windows hosting.
Windows hosting has limited support for CGI / Perl, so if your favorite scripts are in Perl, it has to be Linux hosting for you. On the other hand, good news for FrontPage users is that though it is essentially a proprietary Microsoft-owned software application, many Linux hosting do support FrontPage extensions.

There is an argument that the user interface for Windows hosting is much simpler between the two. However, of late Linux hosting too has improved on this score.
Coming to cost analysis, Windows hosting is costly not only because of proprietary software, but also due to the fact that Windows servers as such are costly, compared to servers used for Linux hosting.

Summing Up

Glossing over, what emerges is that it is the purpose of your website and its future plan that are the determining factors between choosing Linux hosting and Windows hosting. To be sure, all serious hosting providers will, in varying combination, offer a choice of both Windows hosting and Linux hosting.

About the Author:Article by Josh - admin@hostingfrenzy.comJosh is the webmaster of www.hostingfrenzy.comVisit his site for a comprehensive web hosting directory, articles, tools, and much more.

Written by Josh.

Instead of using Microsoft Windows-based technology for operating a website, many people rely on Linux hosting as a really good alternative. As most of you probably know by now, the code that makes Linux run is publicly available, which means that it is an open-source operating system. This is why people all over the world have the possibility to make the system better and better each day! Windows is indeed more easy to operate than Linux, but the chances of failure that Linux provides are very much smaller than for the Windows operating system. This is what makes Linux very useful for running websites.

There are several technologies currently available on the market, all of them being used for Linux hosting purposes. The first technology that is worth your time is PHP. This is a server-side language, meaning the program runs on the server, that is the computer that physically stores the website, rather than the computer being used to view the page. PHP is a programming language which produces dynamic web pages. These are pages which can change in appearance and content in response to something the person viewing it does, for instance filling in a form. One of the programming languages which are being very popular among many programmers is the one called Python. It is relatively sophisticated, but is easier to understand than many programming languages. Python also gives programmers the ability to make a draft alteration to a program and check the effects immediately without having to make the change permanent. Python often uses common English words where other languages simply use symbols.

MySQL is a database system used for websites. It can be used for many different features such as a real estate company letting site visitors search for properties of a certain size and cost.

A more flexible method of organizing the information that makes up a website is XML, that is Extensible Markup Language. XML basically means that a website owner has much more control over the information on their site. With XML, any type of label can be used. For instance, in a page containing a recipe, a piece of text could be labeled as ‘ingredient’ or ‘safety warning’. With the old HTML system, each piece of information was only labeled for appearance, such as bold or italic. This is why XML brings an obvious progress from the techniques that were previously used.

So, no matter which technology you choose, the single thing that really matters is having a clue on what one intends doing.

Linux Hosting Inn - a Linux host who stands for quality, speed and reliability in shared hosting and dedicated servers. Web Hosting Urchin .

Written by Dalvin Rumsey.

Once you have designed the pages on your site, you have to search for a suitable hosting server depending on your website requirements. Web hosting is a process by which your website can be placed with a company server to display and maintain your site. The effective web presence is built by using Windows or LinuxWeb Hosting.

Linux Web Hosting permits business corporations to design their web sites on the Linux Operating System, which is an open-source variation of the Unix Operating System. Using this hosting for web development allows companies to control over the best and most popular in open-source technologies such as PHP, MySQL, Python, and XML. Most of
the Linux based web hosting also includes control tools to allow easy management of sites via the web based technology. Linux is inclusively an operating system which operates on a wide variety of hardware, ranging from Intel and AMD CPUs to hardware such as Digital Alpha computers, PowerPCs, and Silicon Graphics workstations. Moreover the most unique characteristic of Linux is that it is freely shareable.

Linux Web Hosting also offers tools like the Gateway Defender anti-spam and anti-virus service to help you to remove electronic message threats and avoid their possible damaging effects. Gateway Defender tool is your best protection against spam and viruses. The Linux Web Hosting is a single-source solution for all of your website hosting needs.

The shared Linux web hosting is the best principle of users who are looking for reasonable hosting options for smaller sites. With shared hosting the resources of your server such as CPU, memory, hard disk, network capacity are shared with other sites. Make sure when selecting a shared web host provider that they have strict policies on how much a
server is loaded up by other sites. The Linux web hosting has a policy of loading restricted sites to overcome the problems of virus. Linux web hosting offers the services like 200MB+ disk space, PHP and MySQL and Perl, User friendly Control Panel, FTP, FrontPage access, multiple email accounts.

RedHat Linux is the conventional Linux web hosting that influences web sites with the characters of consistent and dynamic platform. The most affordable and reliable web site hosting packages are Linux based. The features included with these packages are multitasking, virtual memory, the best TCP/IP drivers, multi-user capacity tools and so on.

You require professional assistance to know about Linux web hosting and have to be cautious on choosing a web hosting company that provides this product. To help you in searching for these services we recommend using a reliable WebHosting Directory.

Written by Compare Web Hosts.