It’s common to find two kinds of web hosting services being offered by most web hosts – Linux web hosting and Windows web hosting. What this means is that the operating system of the server, on which your website is hosted, is either Linux or Windows.  

Now, a lot of people are not familiar with Linux. On the other hand, almost everyone has heard of Windows operating system and most people have it as an operating system on their computers. So, Windows based web hosting seems the obvious choice for most people. However, you can’t ignore Linux based web hosting (or mark them as unsuitable) just because you haven’t heard of Linux. 

Some people reject Linux based hosting out rightly because they are sceptical about the people across the globe being able to access the website (hosted on Linux) from their Windows work stations. However, this is a big misconception. Whether you host your website on a Linux server or a Windows server, your website can be accessed across the globe with the same ease. Just think, if websites hosted on Linux servers were not accessible through computer that ran on Windows (the most used operating system), why would so many web hosts be offering it? 

There is another set of people who know what Linux is but go for Windows based web hosting thinking that the administration of their website (if hosted on Linux) would not be possible from their Windows work station. Again, this is a misconception. You can easily access a Linux based web hosting account from a Windows work station and perform the administrative/ maintenance tasks without any problem.  

For most people, there is really no major difference between Linux based web hosting and Windows based web hosting. There might be cases when a website has been designed in a way that it’s suited mainly for windows based web hosting or for Linux based web hosting; but other than that you can go for either of the two without any worries. In fact, Linux based web hosting is generally considered more secure than Windows based web hosting (can’t say if it is because of the fact that Windows is targeted more by the internet spies and hackers or just because Linux is more robust). Also, since Linux is open source software, it is customizable and is easier to maintain.  

Whatever server (Windows/ Linux), you choose for your website, the quality of your web hosting will primarily be governed by how good your web host is.