Linux hosting

Linux hosting is an operating system, and an operating system is the program that, after being initially loaded into the computer by a boot program, manages all the other programs in the computer.

It is open source software, which is freely available and designed to provide computer users a free or very low-cost operating system. The two main operating systems that hosting providers tend to use are Windows and Linux.

Linux is mainly known for its use in servers, and is supported by corporations such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Novell, Oracle Corporation, Red Hat and Sun Microsystems.

It is used as an operating system for a wide variety of computer hardware, including desktop computers, supercomputers,[3] video game systems such as PlayStation 2 and 3 and embedded devices such as mobile phones and routers.

Linux hosting is an open operating system; this means the source code is freely available. Volunteers all over the world mainly develop Linux, although the IT industry has started contributing as well.

Unix and Linux are essentially the same since Linux is actually a Unix derivative. Therefore Linux hosting uses technologies such as CGI, Perl, C++, mySQL and PHP. Linux hosting runs on widely differing hardware platforms and there are thousands of applications that can run on it.

Benefits of Linux

• Linux is cheaper than Windows, as no license is needed, and open source software is available for free.
• There is a community spirit with fixing problems and Linux can also be more stable than Windows.
• There is a sense of security when using Linux.

Disadvantages of Linux

• Linux is harder to update than Windows and due to there being no control panel, it's more difficult to use.
• A new system needs to be learnt as Linux is not as familiar as Windows.

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