Member Avatar for ricky0161

hi

please can you tell me whats best to use when hosting my website

Unix or Windows 2003

both are on the own servers and hopefully the site will have a high flow of traffic please can you tell me whats the differnce and which is better and way


thanks

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A short, 2026-focused update to the old “Unix vs Windows 2003” thread (good points from , and ): the one hard “don’t” is running a long‑unsupported OS — Windows Server 2003 reached end of support on July 14, 2015, which makes it a security and compliance risk. For modern projects the OS choice is far less of a hard constraint because many runtimes are cross‑platform and apps are commonly deployed in containers. See Microsoft’s guidance on running .NET on Linux and Docker’s overview of containers for context. Windows Server 2003 end of support (Microsoft blog) (Install .NET on Linux) (What is Docker?.) (microsoft.com)

For a site that expects high traffic, the operational design matters more than “Linux vs Windows.” Offload static content to a CDN to absorb spikes and lower origin bandwidth; design the web tier to scale horizontally and keep services stateless where possible; and use managed databases and caching layers so the database isn’t the bottleneck. These are core patterns in cloud best practices. Cloudflare CDN reference and the AWS Well‑Architected guidance cover these patterns; Amazon RDS documents the benefits of managed relational databases. (developers.cloudflare.com)

Quick, practical checklist (for a high‑traffic launch):

  • Baseline and load‑test the app to find hotspots.
  • Put media and large objects in object storage and serve via CDN.
  • Front app servers with a reverse proxy/cache (NGINX or Varnish).
  • Externalize session/state to a managed cache (Redis) or DB.
  • Use autoscaling/load balancers and managed DB replicas; monitor and alert.
    See NGINX caching notes and platform PaaS options (Azure App Service) for low‑ops deployments. (blog.nginx.org)

Summary: for a new, high‑traffic site today the sensible path is to modernize the stack (containers or PaaS), avoid EOL OSes, and invest in architecture—CDN, caching, horizontal scaling, and managed services—rather than agonizing over which legacy server OS “wins.” (docs.aws.amazon.com)

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Member Avatar for Corey Bryant

That is the debate of the century :)

But if you are going to be using PHP - then using *NIX. If you need ASP / .NET, use Windows. And then just build the server that you are going to need to handle the traffic.

You will find that a lot of people like *NIX, probably because of its costs while some do not like Windows, probably because of it costs.

Member Avatar for alpha2006

Unix/Linux is better if you ask me.
You can do PHP/MySQL, run cron jobs, do chmod, etc...

Member Avatar for euk-roger

I think basically it depends on what yo need. Between Windows 2003 and Unix there is no difference in terms of ease of use.Reliability closely matches so decisions on which to choose should not be solely based on reliability. There is also no difference in speed.

For more detail information please visit the link below :

Member Avatar for zippee

If your site is database driven, it is more important to consider which database to use before finding your servers. High-priced database like Oracle can fit into both servers, but free database like MySQL is running on Linux. Other thing to consider - applications/software available to run on your server.

Member Avatar for vtechno42

hi

please can you tell me whats best to use when hosting my website

Unix or Windows 2003

both are on the own servers and hopefully the site will have a high flow of traffic please can you tell me whats the differnce and which is better and way


thanks

IMO, it defeinatly is what tools work best for your project and keeping the gears running smoothly at all times. Personally, I've never run a massively huge database-driven websites with lodeous amounts of traffic, but from a developer's standpoint, I'd go with Linux. I don't wanna sound like I'm some sort of Linux promo robot (I really don't care enough about who "wins"), but the advantages of using a Linux server (for a developer) is that you don't have to pay the hosting company for the licenses they had to buy from Microsoft, so it's lighter on the wallet. Also, the PHP language is very powerful, well-documented and it's all free. Because there are so many developers using PHP, support and troubleshooting your code is more timely and slightly cheaper.

However, I should note that I'm insanely biased, I've never actually used a Microsoft server before, so I have no contrast. Also, I'm speaking purely from my own experience as a (poor) developer, not as a wemaster. There you have it... my 2¢. =)

Member Avatar for Dani

I'm a PHP/MySQL fan so I say a LAMP server all the way ... Linux Apache MySQL PHP. That's what powers DaniWeb. However, it really all depends upon the backend technologies you plan on using. If you want to use ASP.NET or ColdFusion, go Windows. If you want to go PHP or JSP, go Linux.

Member Avatar for betaisbetta

depends on what you need

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