Windows 2003 VS Unix website hosting, which handles load better.

bump for a interesting question. I got to figure most are away enjoying the 4th

Yea I picked the wrong day to ask biz related questions

Why not, what's changed?

I will wager that a linux or freebsd server will forever outperform a comparable windows setup on similar hardware... Microsoft code has never been efficient, and is getting more and more bloated.

What fuzebox said

ditto...

thank you for your replies.

and yea overusage of resources is something windows is notorious for.

I'm curious too, but I think the question needs to be refined based on what type of site and what software

I'm curious how a windows server running php might perform?

or how asp with mysql might perform on a windows server vs. a similar application running php with mysql on a linux server?

msn.com is hosted on unix servers.

Does that answer your question well enough?

From my experience with both Linux and Windows overall, I would have to say for a server setup that Linux/gui and Windows in graphic mode still takes up a fair amount of ram and cpu, however, if you are running Linux without its gui you would be better off just because of lower system overhead. The computer now a days are so fast that it really should not matter too much, but if you are running tuns of stuff and you need the overhead then consider Linux/Gui... or perhaps Unix/gui.

Good luck,

last time I checked hotmail was hosted on FBSD servers as well.

i think they moved that a long time ago.

all microsofts stuff is running W2K3 ASP.NET now.

I would only use Windows if I had an application that required it, other than that its Unix for me.

Not really something I followed, I think I heard some time ago that ASP.NET with MSSQL would outperform PHP with MySQL, might very well be true.
The problem with a windows server is really the security, the stability have increased a lot since 5 years ago.
Got only 2 windows servers though, running some backup of backup of backups or something in that range

LOL this is rich

Windows hasnt got a chance, UNIX was optimized for mulitprocessor/multiuser apps before windows was got its first virus.

and why would anyone run a GUI on a server? that has almost nothing to do with anything.

There is a reason (as pointed out) that microsoft uses UNIX for MSN.com

NEVER EVER EVER run anything mission critical or load critical on anything microsoft

there are some situations where running windows is better BUT if what you run is PHP/MySQL they were designed for linux and there is just no contest. When it comes to web serving I don't think there's much contest between apache/IIS when it comes to static content.

Obviously if you're a newb to either environment you can easily have shit configured badly to make it all run slower. MySQL for one is somethign that you have to tweak as traffic grows. There is NOT a simply fix all config, there's quite a few settings to tweak depending on what your server is doing.

Anybody telling you that linux/unix is always better is biased.

MySQL for example is HORRIBLE when it comes to like 10+GB DB's which in situations like that something more along the lines of postgres or MSSQL will in fact run better. MySQL DB's simply don't spread across several servers without some serious cash being spent on it and even then reliability is a concern.

If what you're doing is "simple" MySQL will work fine.

Also PHP isn't everything. If you want something put together fast and cheap PHP is the only option. When it comes to server mainanence type things PHP is shit which is where perl can be very handy. Obviously using PHP with like shell_exec or other shell executable commands can do some nice things but its then using a different language to do the heavy lifting.

Personally I use Linux, PHP/MySQL for all my web development. around the house I have a linux box for the central server and win2k8 for my main workstation. Windows has come a LONG ways and 2k8 is great. The "core" security upgrades are in place and it runs nice and fast. they're on the right track

interesting post, still working on the "tweaking mysql" thing, always something to learn in this business.... going back and forth between asp and php and not even close to being an expert at either of them is a challenge as well

That's awesome

I'd always put my money into a Unix server. Even if they were equal in terms of performance, you'll be paying license fees and windows upgrade fees until you bleed to death.
WG