Operating Systems

The various types of Operating Systems web hosts use to provide hosting are:

centos Cent OS is a freely available operating system based upon Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Cent OS stands for Community ENTerprise Operating System. CentOS developers use the source code publicly released by Red Hat under the terms of the GNU General Public License & other licenses to create a final product, ie CentOS, that is very similar to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The logos are changed because Red Hat does not allow them to be used for redistribution. The latest stable release of Cent OS is 5.3.

cold-fusion Coldfusion is an Application Server and Software Language used for building applications on the Internet. Coldfusion was the first language to provide the developer the ease to create dynamic websites attached to a database. The latest stable release of Coldfusion is 8.0.1 and it works on Windows, Linux, MacOS and Unix.

debian Debian is a FREE & open source operating system and is a form of popular Linux. Debian is known for strict adherence to the Unix and free software philosophies as well as using collaborative software development and testing processes. Debian Project is an independent & decentralized non-profit umbrella organization and the Debian OS is developed by over 1,000 volunteers from across the world. Many distributions such as Ubuntu, MEPIS, Dreamlinux, Damn Small Linux, Xandros, Knoppix, BackTrack, Linspire, sidux, Kanotix, Parsix and LinEx are based on Debian. The latest stable release of Debian is 5.0.

Fedora is a general purpose OS built on the top of Linux kernel sponsored by Red Hat. Fedora’s mission statement is: “Fedora is about the rapid progress of Free and Open Source software.” Fedora developers prefer to make upstream changes instead of applying fixes specifically for Fedora—this ensures that updates are available to all Linux distributions. This OS is known for comparatively short life cycles and is famous for the fact that the author of Linux Kernel, Linus Torvalds, uses Fedora for it supports PowerPC very well.

freebsd Free BSD is a Unix-like free os descended from AT&T UNIX via the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). FreeBSD has been characterized as “the unknown giant among free operating systems.” It is not a clone of UNIX, but works like UNIX, with UNIX-compliant internals and system APIs. FreeBSD is generally regarded as reliable and robust. FreeBSD is developed as a complete operating system. The kernel, device drivers and all of the userland utilities, such as the shell, are held in the same source code revision tracking tree, whereas with Linux distributions, the kernel, userland utilities and applications are developed separately, then packaged together in various ways by others. The latest stable release of FreeBSD is 7.1.

Windows Server 2008 is the most recent release of MS Windows server line of OS and is the successor to Windows Server 2003. It’s built on the Windows NT kernel. Windows Server 2008 was codenamed Longhorn during its development. Windows Server 2008 is the first Windows OS to ship with Windows PowerShell, Microsoft’s new extensible command line shell & task-based scripting technology. PowerShell is based on object-oriented programming and version 2.0 of the Microsoft .NET Framework and includes more than 120 system administration utilities, consistent syntax and naming conventions, and built-in capabilities to work with common management data such as the Windows Registry, certificate store, or Windows Management Instrumentation. PowerShell’s scripting language was specifically designed for IT administration, and can be used in place of cmd.exe and Windows Script Host.