I was going to upgrade my Blueyonder free webspace, to the paid service for ?4 a month but decided to look around to see what I could get for the very same ?4.

I found a company that gives 2gb space compared to the 100mb Blueyonder would have given me, 80gb bandwidth, SQL Databases, a .com or .co.uk domain name & loads more.

But which is the best platform to get Windows or Linux? What advantages does one have over the other?

Any opinions would be great.

Do you feel more comfortable with Windoze or Linux? I assume you use Apache as webserver regardless what you choose. So under this aspect there should not be a difference under both. But you have to keep both up-to-date.

Never used Linux at all only ever used windows, the webserver is Apache.

The hosting company gives you the choice of Windows & Linux and I didn't want to jump in and plump for one over the other and find out certain things don't run on the site.

Will wait a while for a few more opinions, just to be certain I get the right one.

Thanks for the input wargand.

if you stick to apache, php, sql as wargand said there's no difference among win or linux as these technologies are well supported on both for a long time.
well, one difference is that linux should cost less as they have not to pay microsoft for licenses.
one thing: on linux, files are case sensitive, so "Index.Html" and "index.html" are different files! remember this if you'll choose linux and "404 File Not Found"pages will start to pop up

if you want to go enterprise and professional to make big e-money with your e-business and have to choose between .NET or J2EE technology, i guess the correct choice is:
.NET --> Windows (for now )
J2EE --> Linux or Windows

Thanks for the advice tweye.

I shouldn't need e-business stuff, but I think some sort of e-commerce comes with the package.

At the moment I'm just going to use the site for screencaps, subs & stuff. But I may make a website at a later date, but the stuff I get for the ?4 a month is much better than the basic blueyonder offer even if a lot goes un-used.

it has to be linux without a doubt in my experience. Whilst i develop the software on windows since that's what i've got installed, to run it the only real option is linux.

You get better uptime, the processes don't run slugish, you get better security and functionality including paths and php exploit protection because of the way linux works. If you get windows cheaper, then by all means choose it, but if you've got the choice with no difference, choose linux.

I'd have to say windows should only be used if you can get it significantly cheaper; if you have the option, linux is always better for services, and is always a better server choice.

Windows is only favourable if you use junk like frontpage extensions, and your a very, very sloppy web developer if you use crap like that if you ask me.

Thanks for the input spud.

The Linux hosting is cheaper than the Windows hosting so I'll go with Linux.



Ah so you know my web developing skills.

lol, I hope for your soul and your hits that was a joke

PHP in eclipse IDE is a good development choice

Not really.

I was going to go down the lazy mans route and use somekind of CMS. When I decide what to use the webspace for that is.

Ah Spud, you know that usually I clearly biased towards linux, however, here I disagree.


Is this still the case? Ok, I would not be surprised, but I thought Windoze got much better. I usually try to avoid pure technical reasons when I flame against the enemy. Security and politics work much better agains m$.


This is where I am not totally sure. If he knows Linux, he is much better served with it. But as a total newbie......Building a secure webserver for more than a few static pages isn't that easy. If he is used to use Windoze and knows its problems it might have a few advantages.
(and now I have to wash my mouth with soap *insert vomitting smily here*).



And if you really want to invest the time to learn Linux. You should!


If you know, what you are doing.

Don't get me wrong, windows servers can stay up, particularly when running apache over IIS, but they are no where near as stable. The Kernal kids club wins handsdown, especially on process control.



Dedicated server or colocation, this maybe the case; for joint webhosting, all the hard stuff is already setup for him and there's nothing to learn or understand deeply about linux specifically (except maybe how to SSH for backups, if Cpanel isn't installed), infact for most hosts they setup everything anyway. You don't need to learn anything about linux works, as long as your competant at middleware there's no problem, and by that I mean paths are case sensitive and absolute: /home/www/yoursite/

I can help out with setting up .htaccess and .pswd files, that's more to do with apache than lniux though.

PHP itself doesn't change overly over the two platforms though. For example as I mentioned earlier, I write all the stuff on windows and it doesn't matter much where its hosted.


You do not have to learn unless you are personally setting up your own webserver, which he isn't. To an end user, beyond a few OS traits that don't surface much, it is almost entirely inconsequential, the advantages are behind the scene a lot of the time.