At this time and whenever possible, all because of the COVID-19 pandemic, most of the tasks are being carried out telematically, that is, from home. Working remotely has its advantages, and many of them we will also take advantage of in services such as Web Hosting or web storage. When we look for a hosting service for a website, a question arises: is one with Linux or one with Windows better?
The answer to this question will depend on several factors: one of them is in which operating system we feel most comfortable. Another, the type of service that we want to offer or the hosting that we have contracted. Many users, especially those who do not have much experience, will think that the best thing to host services or applications like WordPress or Joomla is to do it in Windows, but this is not so. In this article we will show you.
Differences between Linux and Windows hosting
Although there are also options with macOS, Linux and Windows are the two operating systems most used in web servers. If many choose Linux, it is mainly because it is free software, while almost everything from Microsoft is proprietary. When faced with the question of "which is better?", Probably many Linux users would say that the options offered by the penguin operating systems, but we have already explained that it will depend on the service or applications that we want to host.
So which one should I choose?
For starters, web hosting on Linux or Windows it does not depend on the operating system we use on our computer. Our team can use Linux, Windows, macOS, Android, BSD and practically any operating system that allows us to access the administrator menus of our hosting, something that will always be web pages.
On the other hand, we also have to talk about the design of what the hosting will show us. This design will not depend on the operating system either.. For example, if we access https://ubunlog.com/wp-admin, what we will see will be what WordPress offers us, with its panels, its pages, sections and others, for this blog. Exactly the same could be said if we access other hosting services like the one we have in https://www.webempresa.com/hosting/hosting-web.html, and with these two examples we would cover most of the cases in which we could use a web hosting service: one of the blogging type and the other to save information in the cloud.
What will not depend on the operating system are the tools available, unless a client or app is used to access the service. If we enter WordPress, the available tools will be the article editor, the page to manage multimedia content, comments, personal options and others. The tools and design may change depending on whether we use the standard editor (web) or if we use an official or third-party app. In the latter case, it will depend on whether we like one app or another more, something that could make us opt for Windows or Linux.
When is Linux hosting better
When the service we want to use has been developed mainly by developers who use tools more typical of Linux. For example, Wikipedia is made up of pages created with PHP and with a MySQL database. Applications can be installed on Windows hosting, but they work much better on Linux because it is their natural habitat. This is comparable to using Kdenlive or OpenShot on Windows or Linux - it makes sense that they work better on Linux for the same reason.
On the other hand, we are talking about free software and this will translate into a lower cost for the provider. Usually a Linux hosting It will be cheaper than one with the same specifications and features as a Windows hosting.
When is Windows hosting better
In the same way that it is better to use Linux for services that use software designed by the same operating system, it is also better to use Windows to work on software essentially designed for Microsoft systems. For example, if the type of service that we are going to use hosts pages created with languages and tools such as ASP.NET, Visual Basic.NET, Microsoft Access, MS SQL or software from the company that Satya Nadella runs.
In addition, it is more difficult, if not impossible, to install software like the above natively on Linux, so here things would be clearer unless we were using a virtual machine or had advanced knowledge. Even in the latter case, the limitations would make Windows the best option to use the services designed with the aforementioned software.
What does it matter, and what must be taken into account
If what we want is to host a website that only consists of HTML files created with plain text software, such as Kate or another such as Dreamweaver, we do not care. Now yes you have to consider something else: compatibility, as long as some encoding is used.
I am not lying to you when I tell you that I have a brother who whenever I tell him about the benefits of Linux he complains telling me the same story: once he wanted to edit a text file, his PC was not working for him, he took mine, he opened it with LibreOffice (or OpenOffice, I don't remember, but it's basically the same), you changed a lot of text and wasted time without being able to do anything. This is something that can also happen to us in the case that we are dealing with in this article. There are some incompatibilities that we have to take into account:
- Upper and lower case letters may not be respected. This should not be a problem if we use the latest versions of the Linux kernel, but it is worth keeping in mind, in case I am wrong or the function implemented by Linus Torvalds does not work as it should.
- The routes: the main problem will appear in the slashes ("\" and "/"). If you have used WSL You will have seen how annoying this can be: to perform almost any task with routes, we have to modify all the bars or we will do nothing.
- Character encoding: and this is what my brother suffered. Everything can change if we open it with a different software than the original. To fix this, it is best use UTF-8 encoding always. This is possible in most software, so it should not be a problem regardless of whether we create on Windows or Linux.
Summary
As you have seen, in the end there is no better option than the other. It depends on several factors, although personally i would always recommend using linux, but for personal tastes.