What is Linux Website Hosting
What is this Linux thing and what does it have to do with website hosting?
Linux is a world famous operating system like Microsft Windows however Linux is more popular with businesses. Both Windows and Linux can do many of the same things however Linux is extremely well suited for performing business tasks. It is for this reasons that Linux is sometimes called a "Work Horse" operating system. Linux is popular with businesses because it can be installed in a minimalistic format whereby none of the unnecessary bells and whistles are included. By installing Linux in a minimal server format you can avoid wasting system resources for things which aren't critically needed for the machines desired tasks.
Some of the bells and whistles which can be excluded would be the pretty graphical user interfaces (the colorful graphical menus). On a business computer this type of fancy menu probably wouldn't be needed especially if the machine in question is only going to perform a specific set of tasks (such as being an email or a database server). If such a server is going to be sending email all day and all night why would you want to waste system resources on a fancy desktop with colorful animations and sub-menus. Linux when used as a server often resembles the Command Prompt or DOS prompt in Microsoft Windows. It's simply an all black terminal display with a white text prompt for entering commands and reading the output. This can save a large amount of resources, allowing a machine to concentrate all it's processing abilities on the task(s) it was assigned.
In addition to being a powerful "Work Horse" the Linux operating system also has a number of other features which make it ideal for important business tasks (such as website hosting, file & print serving, email hosting, etc). One of the most important of these features is the fact that Linux is open source software. That means that unlike Windows and or Mac, the Linux operating system is completely FREE to install and use. This can save a great deal of money for a large enterprise as buying the licesnes for other operating system such as Windows or Macintosh can add up to a great deal of money very quickly. However, when you read the word "FREE" just now you probably had certain ideas coming to mind about free software which is plaqued by programming bugs, spyware or adware, and even security exploits. Linux is not that type of FREE software, it's Open Source software. This means that the source code is released out into the world and is published for everyone and anyone to read over it and/or use it, etc. This means that millions and millions of programmers have already read over every line of code within Linux providing many chances for any security issues or bugs to be found. By comparison a closed source operating system such as Windows may only be reviewed by a handful of Microsoft employed programmers which can easily increase the liklihood that a bug or security problem may exist in the final version of closed source software which most of us run on our own personal/business computers.
Now that you understand what Linux is we can move move on to what Linux Hosting is. Linux website hosting is website hosting which is built on the Linux operating system platform. Meaning that the website hosting accounts run on a server which is running the Linux operating system. This makes for an extremely efficient, secure, and reliable hosting platform. Linux hosting is so reliable in fact it's currently the number 1 type of website hosting in the world. Because there aren't any license fees for the operating system the hosting companies can afford to have more servers, host more accounts and charge less money for those hosting account services (instead of paying a $1000 per server license fee as is the case with many closed source operating systems). This is why TheWebsiteFriend.com recommends Linux Web Hosting as it's #1 choice for website hosting! All the website hosts on our top 5 and other lists are Linux web hosts.