Hello,
I have a datacenter and running web hosting business for more than 2 decades. We have Linux, FreeBSD and Windows in our servers. My comparison of these two operating systems for hosting purposes are below.
Linux:
- Dominant virtualization platforms change over time. We were first using openvz, then moved to XEN, and finally moved to KVM.
- Driver support for HP, IBM and DELL branded rack servers are very good.
FreeBSD:
- I like jail virtualization system very much. You can guess that from my nickname
It's very easy to manage. Performance and stability is way better when I compare it with all three of openvz, XEN and KVM. But this is just my experience. Others may have different thoughts. Also the jail system is same for years. You don't need to learn new stuff.
- Driver support for major brands is not enough from my experiences. New FreeBSD versions are better of course. But sometimes we have to move from FreeBSD to Linux just for lack of driver compatibility on some models.
I think key points for Linux and FreeBSD in web hosting industry is driver support and virtualization methods. Both of them have their own advantages and disadvantages. But besides of these 2 factors, I think they are all okay for web hosting. Because nowadays, most of the hosting software work on both platforms.
We almost stopped selling FreeBSD servers because of Metin 2 players. We had to increase our FreeBSD server prices to get rid of them. The players of this game are renting servers for gaming and DDoS'ing each other. We were getting DDoS attacks everyday while we were selling FreeBSD. So we firstly increased the prices. We sell Linux servers without any restriction. But when someone order a FreeBSD server, our sales team is calling them by phone, trying to be sure about their usage purposes and even ask for corporate documents. This decisions made our network way stable. 3-4 years ago while we were selling FreeBSD without any restriction, we were getting DDoS attacks almost every day. Today, we have only 1-2 attacks in whole year. We started selling FreeBSD to only professsionals. When someone just calls us and if their first sentences is "Do you have FreeBSD servers?", we are trying to be very sure that he/she never played any game in lifetime
This is our case.
With my best regards.