Web Servers

[CWeb Creative]

Hi I was wondering what any of you with expierence with the hosting industry think are the best servers for web hosting and what linux operating system is best. By best I mean most compatable, most stable, eastiest to administer and lightest on the cpu.

 

[Zubair]

I believe Ubuntu is the best linux operating system for web hosting.

 

[CWeb Creative]

Hmm thats interesting because i'd always thought it was redhat or centos. Well i guess ubuntu could be up there too. I guess it always seemed that it was some what less straitforward about how it did things.

P.S. Thanks for the quick reply and anyone else with anything else to add please do so.

 

[Anna]

if I'm not mistaken all x10's servers run centos

 

[CWeb Creative]

Now that sounds reasonable because i've heard a lot about it. While im being inquisitve anyone know what account panel is used for the main site because it seems quite different from the ipanel that most companys use.

 

[toyowheelin]

As for webservers...Apache is the most common, if you want light and fast however you will have to look at alternatives like nginx, cherokee, and lighttpd.

 

[Anna]

The account panel we have is custom made.

That and cPanel/WHM makes up the foundation for our hosting.

 

[leafypiggy]

Now that sounds reasonable because i've heard a lot about it. While im being inquisitve anyone know what account panel is used for the main site because it seems quite different from the ipanel that most companys use.

If you're referring to http://x10hosting.com/panel.php, it's hand coded, and completely original.

 

[CWeb Creative]

Well that is cool, that just shows how much x10 is actually dedicated to providing good service. I thought that might be the case because it looks so custom to x10 an is integrated right into the site. Thanks for the information to all who have responded and who will. Anyway is cpanel only compatable with apache or does it support any other web server program.

Anyone with additional information please feel free to elaborate.

 

[toyowheelin]

I am not positive but I am pretty sure that cPanel only uses apache.

 

[CWeb Creative]

Thats what i thought but i wasn't shure because of the front page of the x10 servers.

 

[kefka_asylum]

i hated ubuntu from the first failed click

i started using linux when ubuntu was the new vibe of the tech day
i started on slackware and have migrated through several linux distros

yes i agree with centos, i am learning to use centos4.5

also scientificOS is basically the same as centos


for windows server 2003 i have xampp after disasters getting individual apache,php,msql running together

 

[wongers]

an interesting thought is that there is now "portable Ubuntu" where you can load and use Ubuntu as an application inside Windows.

I havent had a play around with this yet but I am wondering if you are still able to use all the webserver functionality that comes with Ubuntu in this new form? surely that would be spectacular if you can?

I prefer to use ubuntu if and where possible, and im not even talkin about just webservers, its just my operating system of choice. unfortunately i do still recquire windows so i can still play games. ive heard of Wine or something that is a windows application emulator but not sure if this works with games?

might raise a thread about it later after ive googled it for a bit

 

[dibb3386]

an interesting thought is that there is now "portable Ubuntu" where you can load and use Ubuntu as an application inside Windows.

I havent had a play around with this yet but I am wondering if you are still able to use all the webserver functionality that comes with Ubuntu in this new form? surely that would be spectacular if you can?

I prefer to use ubuntu if and where possible, and im not even talkin about just webservers, its just my operating system of choice. unfortunately i do still recquire windows so i can still play games. ive heard of Wine or something that is a windows application emulator but not sure if this works with games?

might raise a thread about it later after ive googled it for a bit

Ive used WINE with Fedora 10, didnt turn out so well. Its better than nothing and if you cant afford to splash out on windows then yeah all for it. But games dont emlate very well. Pokerstars works however cant fullscreen and sometime runs a little slow. I did get a few apps that emulated well on it.

So ids say get a copy of windows if you can, but still try WINE make your own mind up about it, obviously it will develop and have better compatability etc in the future.

 

[steronius]

In my humble opinion...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAMP_%28software_bundle%29

regarding linux i'd think Ubuntu best for Desktop, CentOS best for Server.

Also look at http://www.turnkeylinux.org/ for VM's.

 

[vishal]

We use CentOS ,it is a nice sustitute for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. For RHEL we must pay them for license..
CentOS is free and also get rpms from thier server.

 

[stesouthby]

i use CentOS on mine and as for cpanel if you want to host websites like x10 you better off coding it yourself that way you know there not going to be any sercurity flaws like not blocking a port and stuff

 

[steronius]

wiivsps3, I re-read your original post.... After coming across BSD Magazine and reading one of the down-loadable issues, you may want to look into BSD (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, PCBSD, DesktopBSD) and LightHTTPd. LightHTTPd is light on resources, not on functionality). To partly answer your question directly, i believe most commercial industry use Apache on unix/linux or IIS on windows, but again, you may want to consider lighthttpd on a BSD variant.

 

[mcnigelmcgruff]

For web servers, there are a few options:
If you just want something easy, Windows can do the basics; however it has heavy resource usage, it will crash more often than its Linux counterpart, and you will need to restart for just about anything.
If you are willing to learn some about Linux, it can be very rewarding. There are a few distros:
-Ubuntu is the cleanest running and smallest impact, but the server version does not come with a GUI (command line only) and it is usually not as compatible with software as a Red Hat distro (Red Hat, Fedora, CentOS)
-CentOS is stable and easy to find software for, but is becoming dated due to the fact that new versions are no longer being developed
-Fedora is the newest version of the Red Hat distro. It runs pretty well, but is not as compatible with software as CentOS

For server software:
-Apache is widely accepted as the best web server out there. But, just like Linux, it takes some learning to get it to do anything other than host basic pages.
-Stay well away from Microsoft's IIS (Internet Information Services) web server. It could easily be the worst piece of software to exist.
-An alternative for Windows http software is KFWS. (www.keyfocus.net). Its only downside is that it cannot do SSL
-If you want FTP/SSL for Windows, the best solution is FreeSSH (www.freesshd.com)

For hosting software:
The x10hosting environment is based on a cPanel core. cPanel is VERY, VERY, VERY good at what it does (no other software even comes close). The problem with that is that cPanel is also VERY expensive unless you negotiate a large deployment contract.
If you are looking for a free alternative, you might want to try webmin (www.webmin.com) with the virtualmin addon. It's a good start for what you are looking for, but it will only run on Linux. (There is a Windows version available; good luck getting it to work.)

 

[flare183]

I think Ubuntu is the best for anything that deals with Linux