Originally Posted by farkedup

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