To begin with, many people believe that just because they run a version of Windows on their home computer they must choose a host who runs Windows NT (now Windows 2000). This couldn't be farther from the truth. What operating system you run on your PC will have absolutely no bearing on your dealings with the web server. Even those designers who use Microsoft's FrontPage will have no problem publishing their site on a Unix server.

We would also like to point out that there are many different flavors of Unix available, with Linux being the most popular. For the purposes of our discussion here we will refer to all of these different variants collectively as Unix.

Of course, Unix and NT are not the only two operating systems available. However, combined they claim well over 90% of the market share for professional applications and as a result they are the ones we will concentrate on here.

Unix

Unix is traditionally considered the operating system of choice for most professional, advanced users. This is due mainly to its reputation as a powerful and versatile, yet very stable OS.

As for the advantages of running Unix, there are quite a few. For starters many of the web applications and scripts available on the internet, both as freeware and commercially, are intended for the Unix OS. This includes the many scripts written in languages such as Perl, C, C++, Java, and PHP. 

In addition, Unix itself is an open source operating system. This means that the source code for the OS itself is freely available to anyone who wants to add to or improve it. As a result there have been a massive number of bug fixes, new features, and additional developments for the OS. Many professional programmers and designers have always and will always work only with Unix systems

Those serving in a Unix environment will also have a little more freedom. With Telnet and SSH Unix clients can do a lot more themselves, configuration wise, than those running on other operating systems.

Unix was built with stability and efficiency in mind. The resulting operating system is able to do a lot more with a lot less than NT systems with comparable resources. It's not unheard of to have Unix machines which are several years old, with only 32 or 64 MB of RAM, running multiple programs with perfect stability. An NT machine in a similar situation would be very unstable and run the risk of server crashes on a regular basis.

On the downside, many new users simply aren't comfortable with Unix. While those with simple hosting needs could run their sites on a Unix server without ever learning a single thing, those users wishing to build advanced sites would need to learn at least some of the basic Unix program commands.

There are also several types of server applications, mostly those authored by Microsoft, which cannot be supported by Unix These include Microsoft's Active Server Pages (ASP) and Microsoft's SQL database software among others. This may not be a problem for long, though, as several companies have already developed software which will allow these applications to run on Unix systems and other fixes are currently under development.