I will! Ok, not completely. I'm an avid windows user, but not a blind Gates disciple.. please don't accuse me of that. I will never say that a Windows server is the 'best' platform for doing PHP script serving because I don't believe that's the case. It DOES work, but it's far from the 'best'. If it was one of the 'best' then Zend would never have created Zend WinEnabler to "...bring PHP on Windows up to par with PHP on Linux..." (http://www.zend.com/store/products/zend-win-enabler.php if you're curious) And for $500, I'd say that Linux of any flavor is definitely a winner over Windows just for that reason. BUT... when it comes to picking an OS for your server, it's VERY important to ask yourself a few key things. Probably the biggest in my book would be who is going to be maintaining this server and how easy would it be to find another person if you had to. PHP hosted on BeOS might be the absolute best in performance, but if you're hard pressed to find another BeOS admin if your chosen admin dies, quits, gets fired, etc.... then it's not worth going that route. This choice affects pretty much everything else. Downtime, deployment time, security, etc. If you have a bunch of Windows admins and you insist that they install Linux and put up an Apahce/PHP setup, there's probably going to be some learning time, potential problems, misconfigurations, frustrations, random downtimes when problems come up and solutions have to be researched from scratch, etc. If you already have an established Windows server based network, don't be afraid to set up PHP. It may not be the best, but you'll have fewer long-term problems I believe. If you're starting from scratch all around.. either admin'ing it yourself or havn't hired the admin.. or your admin knows nothing about computers to start with and will be learning everything from step 1 anyway, then definitely go linux. Red hat is very popular, as well as many of the BSDs. As much as I like Windows AND Linux, all practicality says go with whatever you have established and keep your network simple. Even if you have a Windows network and a Windows admin who's also proficient in Linux, think of what you'd have to do to replace that person someday. You'd end up having to find another Windows+Linux admin or get a Linux admin and possibly a separate Windows person. Personally I like dealing with MS SQL Server better than MySQL by a LONG shot, but PHP best ASP/ASP.Net handsdown. So my last job where I worked with PHP under Windows Server 2003 interfacing (via ADODB) with SQL Server and Oracle was great. I didn't have any problems with PHP running under Windows. But it also wasn't a "mission critical" or high volume setup. Results may vary. -TG = = = Original message = = = I personally like OpenBSD - though many of the BSDs are similar at many tasks and only have notable differences in a few areas (and it's those areas you should look to find which works best for you). I wonder who will get bored and stir up the ants nest and say Windows? ;) ___________________________________________________________ Sent by ePrompter, the premier email notification software. Free download at http://www.ePrompter.com. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
