The following discussion gives insight into which platform should be used for virtual server hosting. For UNIX, we sometimes use Sun Microsystem's Solaris 7 operating system. Unlike Windows, UNIX comes in many different flavors, such as Solaris, Red Hat Linux, and FreeBSD. This discussion examines the difference between these two operating sytems from various perspectives, all of which should be considered when determining which platform you should use for virtual server hosting. 

User Friendliness

The following discussion gives insight into which platform should be used for virtual server hosting. For UNIX, we sometimes use Sun Microsystem's Solaris 7 operating system. Unlike Windows, UNIX comes in many different flavors, such as Solaris, Red Hat Linux, and FreeBSD. This discussion examines the difference between these two operating sytems from various perspectives, all of which should be considered when determining which platform you should use for virtual server hosting. 

Stability

Without question, we feel that Sun/Solaris (UNIX) is far more stable than Windows in a shared-server, or multiuser environment. Given the background of UNIX, which dates back into the early 1960's versus Windows birth in the 1990's, UNIX has had far more time to improve in efficiency and stability. It is our opinion that Windows NT/2000 was not developed for the multiuser, shared-server hosting environment (which can be a high demanding environment at times) where UNIX kernal has been developed under these conditions.

Functionality

Many commercial applications, especially e-commerce packages, are developed for the Windows environment. While UNIX does have commercial support for popular application such as Real Networks G2, Miva, and now WebTrends, the history of UNIX software development is Open Source, or GNU software (non-commercial). Therefore, many more commercial applications for e-commerce and web development are developed for the Windows environment. On the flip side, may open source applications which have gained tremendous popularity, such as Perl, PHP3, and mySQL were developed for UNIX operating systems under the GNU license. Commercial applications versus GNU software can easily distinguish which platform should be used when considering funcionality.

Our Experience

Talk-PC has been working with Sun/Solaris for about 2 years now, and general UNIX OSes including Open Source software (Red Hat Linux, FreeBSD) for about 4 years. However, we have been working with Windows NT/2000 for only 1 year now, so our experience much heavily weighted towards UNIX, especially the Solaris Operating System.

Our Final Opinion

It is our opinion that the Solaris platform is much more suited for multiuser funcionality than the Windows platform. For clients looking to create a simple website with little experience or dymanic features with GNU software (Perl, PHP3), we recommend a UNIX-based virtual server. However, clients looking for e-commerce add-ons for their virtual server or with high-end databasing or development needs, we recommend the Windows platform.