Choosing an Operating System for Your Web Pages

Accessing the Server: Both Windows and Linux have FTP access to your files, however Linux tends to offer Telnet or SSH access while few hosting providers offer it for Windows. FTP is a way of transferring your files from your hard drive to your Web server. Telnet and SSH are used to open a window directly on the Web server and edit files right directly with Unix command lines. Some of the FTP commands differ between Linux and Windows while other FTP programs may be designed with one or the other in mind. This means on occasion when your running your FTP program it returns an error message, however this is uncommon and easily remedied.

Performance: There no major difference between the two servers. Linux tends to be slightly faster due to Windows comprehensive package as apposed to the extendable Linux implementation. On the whole the difference is not noticeable however if performance is an issue and your optimising for speed then this may be worth considering.Writing Your Pages Both Windows and Linux servers serve HTML pages and JavaScript. Typically, Windows servers use files named *.htm while Linux servers use files named *.html, there is no real difference and you can use both file names on either server. FrontPage extensions are often the reason to use a Windows server, however there are Linux servers that offer this service as well. message, however this is uncommon and easily remedied.

Compatibility Issues : The use to which you intend to put your web page is the major reason to pick which server to use. Most web features including databases run fine on both platforms including PHP, mySQL, POP3 etc. If you intend to create your site using ASP, FrontPage, the .NET environment, Windows Streaming Media, Access, MSSQL, or any of the other Microsoft proprietary technologies then you probably need to use a Windows host as there is little support for several of these technologies in Linux, and they tend be expensive while lacking in features. Anyway your probably better of sticking to generic technologies from the start as this removes the need to focus on specifics and allows you to focus on the quality of service itself. CGI and Perl access are often found on both Windows and Linux servers, but it is more typical on Linux. If you need to program forms, you should make sure that your hosting service provides CGI or another way to process them. But you're not stuck with just Perl if you need to process forms. Many hosting systems offer PHP, ASP, and ColdFusion. These server side scripting options give you a lot of flexibility. PHP is more often found on Linux systems, while ASP is more often found on Windows. ColdFusion can be found on both.

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