As a web developer having experience on Windows and Linux, I prefer to work on Linux servers. Here are the reasons why (for CentOS – might not be same for all distributions):

1. Viewing error and access logs
2. No need to waste RAM
3. Many free tools
4. Easier to access remotely
5. No need to reboot

1 Viewing Logs

Pretty much it is the same for every log file. On Windows you need to open it with notepad and scroll down to the end of the file. On Linux this is not the case. With use of tail you only see last n lines of the file (default: 10). It doesn’t lag even when working with the biggest files. You can watch the file for changes using “-f” option. On Windows you need to reopen the file to see the changes.

2 No Need to Waste RAM

Linux installations are highly customizable. You can even select not to install the GUI. Since you can do everything from command line, you don’t really need it.

3 Free

Most of the Linux distributions are free. Most of the Linux programs are free. Why pay for it?

4 Easier to Access Remotely

On Linux servers SSH is the most common way to take control of the machine. It can also be used for file transfers. Windows alternative to this is to use Remote Desktop which uses more bandwidth and causes latency.

5 No Need to Reboot

On Linux you never need to reboot the system. You do hundreds of updates and it just restarts the services that are affected by the updates. I hear people that are using Linux as their personal computer saying they had never rebooted their system for a year. You know how it is on Windows.

More than 60% of top web sites are running on Linux. They can’t be wrong, can they?