[Vince]

I thought it'd be interesting to post a poll about this. It seems there are three distinct camps: Debian folks, CentOS folks and Windows folks. Plus the rest, but they don't count. I'd like to see the proportions between them, just because. I'm also interested to know what exactly drew you to this specific OS. Serious votes and replies only, thanks. No home hosts or test servers!

This ancient forum software unfortunately only allows me to post a single question with 10 options so I kind of condensed them a bit more than I would like, but it'll have to do.

• CentOS
• Debian
• Ubuntu
• Other Linux (Debian based)
• Other Linux (RedHat based)
• Other Linux (neither Debian nor RedHat based)
• Windows Server 2008
• Windows Server 2012
• Windows Server 2016
• Something else still ...

[iLearner]

Ubuntu... Simply because I didn't wanted to use windows (I tried windows earlier and I wasn't impressed).

[Hansrutger]

I am not running a server right now but I have had the same VPS for many months now and am planning to host a SAMP server very soon on it, so it will be Windows Server 2012. I have never tried Linux and probably won't be for quite a while. There's not really any major reason of why other than the fact that I value design, familiarlization (if that's even a valid word) and that I do not want to try something new right now. With windows you can have most hosting ways (XAMPP, IIS, etc) whilst on a linux you really can't without losing a bit of functionality (from what I have read). I've had many university projects where it was of me required to deal with IIS or running .NET based applications (had to build a website in ASP.NET).

To pay a license just to get what I want to have on a server I host things on? That for me is a good deal and it's purely subjective. Now I know bunch of kids will go "but this is better"; well not for me. I will take time in the future to see how linux works but for the time being I am very happy with what I have.

[iKarim]

Ubuntu 17.04/16.04 mostly, though I sometimes use Debian 8.7/8.0 whenever it's available. I went for Ubuntu/Debian, because it's easier to use, compared to CentOS which is a waste of time for me, I guess another reason is most of the packages are available via apt, unlike CentOS's yum.

[Vince]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hansrutger With windows you can have most hosting ways (XAMPP, IIS, etc) whilst on a linux you really can't without losing a bit of functionality (from what I have read). I've had many university projects where it was of me required to deal with IIS or running .NET based applications (had to build a website in ASP.NET).

Well yes, if you want to host a .NET application then you can't get around using Windows Server, but it is loads easier to install a LAMP or LEMP (my favorite) stack on Linux because these applications were pretty much designed to run on Linux. Something like XAMPP is great for testing but it also comes with a lot of bloatware that you don't really need and I'd be wary of using it on a production server.

[Hansrutger]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vince Well yes, if you want to host a .NET application then you can't get around using Windows Server, but it is loads easier to install a LAMP or LEMP (my favorite) stack on Linux because these applications were pretty much designed to run on Linux. Something like XAMPP is great for testing but it also comes with a lot of bloatware that you don't really need and I'd be wary of using it on a production server.

What would you recommend using instead of XAMPP, while not being IIS because quite frankly I don't like it, again subjective.

[Franci]

Ubuntu.

[Vince]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hansrutger What would you recommend using instead of XAMPP, while not being IIS because quite frankly I don't like it, again subjective.

XAMPP for Windows includes all of these:

• Apache
• MariaDB
• PHP
• phpMyAdmin
• OpenSSL
• XAMPP Control Panel
• Webalizer
• Mercury Mail
• Transport System
• Tomcat
• Strawberry Perl
• FileZilla FTP Server

Chances are you're only interested in the first four. So why bother with the rest if you're not going to use it? Waste of spaces, waste of resources. Install the components you need separately so you know what gets installed.

For Windows your webserver choices are pretty much limited to IIS and Apache. I tend to use either nginx or lighttpd as my webserver of choice (on Linux) but neither seem to have a very stable Windows version at the moment. I don't like Apache because it is overkill for my purposes. It uses a ton of memory which is quite taxing on a system with limited resources.

[Hansrutger]

I see, thanks!