I'm curious... what makes people choose between Windows and Unix based Platforms for their hosting?

Consumers.. what do you choose and why?

Also I look around the different people in the who's who and I notice the majority of hosts here are using Unix based Platforms. Why?

Whats the motivation in each case?

My guess is Unix based platforms do not have the high licensing costs of Windows. A lot of people also think Unix is more stable then Windows but at the end of the day both systems need to be set up well and administrated regularly.

Good question - there are a lot of reasons for and against each:

Price:
With a UNIX system a host can get away with paying almost no setup costs, except for inititial installation and continued administration. Windows servers require investments of over $10,000 to set up with complete Microsoft branded software.

Support:
UNIX has open source community support, available twenty four hours per day with a LOT of technical experience. Windows has paid for support, available sometimes, with very little technical experience unless you can dig through the phone networks at Microsoft to find the right people.

Speed:
Microsoft sponsored benchmarks show that Windows is faster. Un-sponsored benchmarks show that UNIX is faster. It all comes down to how things are set up, what software in particular is being used, etc. A UNIX server does not run a GUI - a Windows server typically does.

Learning Curve:
Windows is a LOT easier to learn and use than a UNIX system. I have years of experience in both, Windows is definatley easier - but takes more time - and UNIX is harder, but I get things done faster. UNIX gives you a lot more power, so when you make a mistake its a big mistake - but its a tradeoff - I can do things a lot faster in UNIX than windows.

Software:
UNIX has plenty of open-source software available. Windows does not have the same range of software available. Typically UNIX software is much more configurable (and if not, you have the source code.)

Security:
Windows has security holes found in it very often. As does a lot of UNIX software. Microsoft takes weeks, even months, to fix these holes sometimes. UNIX security issues are fixed within hours normally. This is one of the prime reasons, UNIX is a lot more secure.

Stability:
Our UNIX servers stay up for years without downtime. I can't give stats on Windows servers, but the most I have ever *seen* is about 120 days.

Hardware Utilization:
UNIX seems to make a much better utilization of the hardware available to it than windows, though I expect that this is in large part due to the fact that Windows runs a GUI. RAM for example is gobbled up by IIS and Windoes, whereas an Apache server on UNIX doesn't use nearly as much - again this depends on configuration.

I hope I've answered your question as un-biasedly as possible, though I must admit that I prefer UNIX in my experience.

A very unbiased and balanced response. However I must disagree with the cost of set-up of windows servers. Sure if you use microsoft software exclusively your are going to run to $10K. But there are many other cheaper options. There are open source windows vesions of MySQL and PHP 4.0 the only real expense beyond the OS is a mail server.

There are also excellent windows help communities for example www.minasi.com/forum (my favourite). And the bugs with win 2K are usually patched within 48 hours, its not as leaky as people think, the problem with windows is YOU Have to secure it, the default set-up is NOT secure.

Thanks. That's a good point. But the bottom line of UNIX vs Windows on the same setup (assuming all software comes as open source) is still going to favour UNIX. What about the fact that most of that OSS was initially designed for UNIX and then later ported to windows - this seems like overhead added that may cause problems.



I should also mention that there is no single OS, nor will there ever be, that is secure out of the box. Never trust it out of the box. Even with new UNIX servers I spend a few hours to tighten things up even though they are behind a firewall.

My experience with Microsoft has been bad in the past, and I doubt they have changed that much. With Windows NT4 security fixes were released up to a month later sometimes, and were included in a "multimedia update" because "there never was a security issue". With open source software (including the operating system) you can patch the source yourself.

I'm running my client on Windows 2K - I trust it as a client.

Travis (refcom),

Have you tried using Windows XP professional as a client? Of course with all the services being open from a fresh install some may be concerned with security.

As far as that goes, there are plenty of sites out there that can basicly run you though a crash course of what services you might want open and which to shutdown for whatever use you may need the box for.

I suppose the same could be saud for a UNIX or even Win2k platform, but i am not very familiar with win2k, so I cannot add for or against it a whole lot

I have been thinking of giving it a try for quite some time now Spy, the problem is that I'm set up with 2K and using it... Changing takes a lot of time. I havn't had this installation of Win2K crash for up to a week or two at a time - I got very lucky. The only problem is that sometimes explorer goes crazy and starts opening hundreds of windows... Always an excuse to get off my butt and get a cup of coffee myself instead of waiting for the secretary to offer. (Happens every morning lol.)

Yeah I wish I didn't get that excuse... my coffee sucks!