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ApplauZ Online offers 6 plans
on Unix and Windows platforms.
The following discussion gives
insight into our opinions
regarding which platform should
be used for virtual server
hosting. For UNIX, we use
the Linux operating system.
Unlike Windows, UNIX comes
in many different flavors,
such as Solaris, Red Hat Linux,
and FreeBSD. This discussion
examines the difference between
these two operating systems
from various perspectives,
all of which should be considered
when determining which platform
you should use for virtual
server hosting.
While the consensus holds
that UNIX based web hosting
is more user friendly than
Windows, it is our belief
that with our Personal Control
Panel for both the UNIX and
Windows platforms makes both
user friendly. However, UNIX
does have some features, such
as Telnet/SSH that makes it
easier to administer your
web hosting account.
Without question, we feel
that UNIX is far more stable
than Windows in a shared-server,
or multiuser environment.
Given the background of UNIX,
which dates back into the
early 1960's versus Windows
birth in the 1990's, UNIX
has had far more time to improve
in efficiency and stability.
It is our opinion that Windows
NT/2000 was not developed
for the multiuser, shared-server
hosting environment (which
can be a high demanding environment
at times) where UNIX kernal
has been developed under these
conditions.
Many commercial applications,
especially e-commerce packages,
are developed for the Windows
environment. While UNIX does
have commercial support for
popular application such as
Real Networks G2, Miva, and
now WebTrends, the history
of UNIX software development
is Open Source, or GNU software
(non-commercial). Therefore,
many more commercial applications
for e-commerce and web development
are developed for the Windows
environment. On the flip side,
may open source applications
which have gained tremendous
popularity, such as Perl,
PHP3, and mySQL were developed
for UNIX operating systems
under the GNU license. Commercial
applications versus GNU software
can easily distinguish which
platform should be used when
considering functionality.
ApplauZ Online has been working
with Sun/Solaris and Linux
for about 2 years now, and
general UNIX OSes including
Open Source software (Red
Hat Linux, FreeBSD) for about
4 years. However, we have
been working with Windows
NT/2000 for only 2 years now,
so our experience much heavily
weighted towards UNIX, especially
the Solaris and the Linux
Operating System.
It is our opinion that the
Linux or Solaris platform
is much more suited for multiuser
functionality than the Windows
platform. For clients looking
to create a simple website
with little experience or
dynamic features with GNU
software (Perl, PHP3), we
recommend a UNIX-based virtual
server. However, clients looking
for e-commerce add-ons for
their virtual server or with
high-end data basing or development
needs, we recommend the Windows
platform.
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