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Linux web servers "faster"
Windows loses out

By David Meyer

Published: Thursday 21 June 2007

Linux-based websites perform better than those hosted on Windows servers, according to new research.

WatchMouse, a Dutch firm that monitors server performance, based its research on a survey of more than 1,500 European websites. The company said that although the websites it surveyed were more frequently based on Microsoft's IIS web server platform running Windows than on Apache running Linux, the latter option performed better in terms of both uptime and load time.

The research showed a marked preference within the UK for Windows-based systems, at 59 per cent of all systems surveyed.

Linux accounts for only 17 per cent of the UK total, with Solaris at 15 per cent. BSD trailed behind at three per cent and Unix at one per cent.

German firms are less keen on Windows-based web servers. Less than 20 per cent of websites in Germany run on Windows-based systems.

WatchMouse also noted that, overall, two-thirds of the websites it surveyed had an availability of less than 99.9 per cent, representing downtime of at least eight hours per year.

WatchMouse CTO Mark Pors said: "Even though the companies in our study seem to prefer Windows over Linux, our research shows they would be better off using Linux/Apache-based websites. Research has shown that most web users are very impatient and will wait no longer than four seconds for a web page to load. Organisations need to become more aware of the impact the choice of web-server platform can have on their overall availability and performance."

David Meyer writes for ZDNet UK