What is Linux Web Hosting?

By Dhruv Patel

When you search for a web hosting company, you often find the word "Linux Web Hosting". If you are a little technical person then you might know what is linux web hosting. In this article, I am going to give you details about Linux web hosting.

What Is Linux?

To understand about Linux web hosting, you need to understand what is Linux? In simple words, Linux is an operating system just like Windows 98, Windows XP or Windows Vista. You can do your daily computer task by installing Linux on your system.

History

Linux is a Unix like operating system. Linux was developed by Linus Torvalds in 1991. Torvald wanted to make a non-commercial replacement of Minix. Eventually, he came up with Linux kernel. A kernel is a core part of Linux operating system.

Free Source Code

Linux source code is freely available to everyone. Those who have slight idea about Linux always misunderstand things. Linux itself may not be free. The source code is free if you purchase any Linux distribution like RedHat or Ubuntu. Linux might cost you but you will get a source code free with Linux distribution. You are free to edit that source code as long as you follow the guidelines under GNU's General Public License.

What You Will Get With Linux Web Hosting?

Now you know what Linux is. You need to understand what you will get with Linux hosting and how Linux hosting works.

LAMP software bundle is used in any company providing Linux web hosting. LAMP stands for Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP/Perl/Python

Linux, you know, is an operating system. Apache is a web server. Like Linux, Apache is also an open source project. Apache is widely used web server. It's not that Apache only runs on Linux. For Windows also, Apache is available. For serving HTML pages, web server is needed. Most Linux shared hosting uses Apache to server pages.

MySQL is a database. MySQL provides multi users access to many databases. For implementing an advance application, you need database access.

PHP/Perl/Python are programming language used for making very advance web application. Most of Linux web hosting supports PHP. Perl and Python are not supported by all web hosting providers. Only few web hosting providers support Perl and Python language.

Windows Hosting Vs Linux Hosting

When you want to host your web site, you might be confused about whether to choose Windows hosting or Linux hosting. There is not a major difference between Windows hosting and Linux hosting.

Windows is a property of Microsoft. If you are going to use any Microsoft applications like ASP.Net, Visual C++ or Frontpage, then it's advisable that you use Windows hosting.

From performance point of view there is not much difference between Windows and Linux hosting. Linux systems are more stable and less vulnerable to security breach. So with Linux hosting, you can expect more up time. Linux system runs for long time without rebooting. Windows need frequent rebooting after upgrade.

Major difference comes in price. Linux hosting is cheaper than Windows hosting. So if you are looking for cheap and reliable web hosting with no special usage of any Microsoft application then you should choose Linux web hosting.

DreamHost is a famous Linux web hosting provider. Check out detailed DreamHost Review. With DreamHost Coupon, you will get hosting at very attractive rate.