Ubuntu Web Hosting

Ubuntu, like CentOS, is a popular Linux distribution being used

by many web hosting providers and businesses who like to use

Linux as part of their IT infrastructure. However, unlike CentOS,

Ubuntu is also available as a desktop Linux distribution meaning

that some businesses choose to use it both on their web hosting

servers and on their desktop machines. Like a majority of Linux

distributions, Ubuntu is free to use therefore meaning that you

can use it on as many web hosting servers as you with without

having to pay a penny in license costs, on the other hand you

could use a Windows server operating system instead and be

forced to pay licensing and support fees.

Ubuntu web hosting provides users with a reliable form of web

hosting since Ubuntu is still actively maintained meaning that there

are regular patch releases and updates available to ensure that

it is a secure operating system to use both server and desktop wise.

Ubuntu is available as an operating system for a majority of

VPS hosting packages, and can normally be installed on your

dedicated server for you by request. Since Ubuntu is based

on Linux, it means that there is a large number of existing programs

available that can be made to run on Ubuntu desktop machines

and servers with some modifications.

Since Ubuntu has a fairly nice GUI and specialist tools, it is liked

by many multimedia designers who specialist in video design and

music production. Ubuntu can also be easily updated which helps

you as the end user ensure that your installation of Ubuntu is as

secure as possible. Programs and packages that you have installed

on your Ubuntu installation, along with the operating system itself,

can all be updated using the ‘apt’ updater and installer. ‘Apt’ comes

installed as part of a standard Ubuntu installation, the reason being

that Ubuntu is based on the Debian sourcecode which ‘apt’ is based on.

Since Ubuntu is based on Debian sourcecode, it is one of the most

secure and reliable Linux distributions around; this is because Debian

itself is very secure and reliable and has been seen as the leader in the

open source Linux distribution industry for a long time. In web hosting

it is important to use a secure and reliable operating system since you

want to ensure that your servers aren’t going to face any periods of downtime because you have chosen to use the wrong operating system.

Like with any web hosting operating system, you need to be able to

ensure that Ubuntu is going to be able to run the programs that you

need to function such as control panels, web servers, and mail server

hosting applications. If you want to offer your own Linux web hosting

packages then you will need to ensure that Ubuntu is able to support

the cPanel control panel so that you can sell of your own web hosting packages.

It is important to note that Ubuntu can already support various mail

server and DNS server applications as well as the Apache web server.
Because of its advanced multimedia capabilities, Ubuntu is the preferred

operating system of Linux web hosting providers who want to offer their

web hosting services based on multimedia programs such as FFMPEG and

other freely available tools. In this case you will also find that such

web hosting providers will also host regular web hosting clients on the

same server since Ubuntu is able to handle multimedia requests just as

well as it can handle standard web page requests. In terms of client side use,

Ubuntu doesn’t appear any different that any other Linux distribution would

but in terms of management it is completely different.

Since Ubuntu is a completely different operating system in terms of

how it is managed, you are only likely to be able to manage it easily to

begin with if you have prior knowledge and experience on managing

VPS servers and dedicated servers which are based on the

Debian Linux distribution. If you are a web hosting system administrator

who is already managing CentOS based servers then you will find that

Ubuntu is a completely different beast in its own league, meaning that

you may need to do some extra research in order to be able to manage

an Ubuntu server correctly.

In conclusion, when choosing a VPS server or a dedicated server

you will be better to choose a web hosting company that is able to

offer you a choice of server operating systems. Although Ubuntu web hosting

may have its advantages, its useless to you unless you are using it on the

desktop or want to use a server for multimedia processes. If you plan on

using your server solely for hosting a mail server for web server then you

will be better off using the CentOS Linux distribution.

For more information visit here:

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