Does anyone have the pro's and cons of each? I may buy a dedicated server but I dont know which one to choose. If I want to run a site like youtube, for example, which one would I pick?
Stick with Linux - don't have to pay for the OS, can run more popular control panels such as cPanel and has much more versatility then a Windows sever. In my experience running PHP on a Linux server is definitely faster (a more supported) than on a Windows server. As for Youtube, it runs on Linux - as does the rest of Google.
Another vote for Linux, All of the web programming/management, etc you need is in there. My experience has been the the point-and-click MS products are very limited and not very efficient, either. Linux will allow you to do a whole lot more, be a whole lot more creative and, as mentioned above, it's free Best wishes, Mike
I prefer Linux Servers.They are cheap and more secure. One merit of windows servers is that you can code your site easily with asp.
Go for Linux server as they're much cheaper compare to Windows server. Most of the scripts out there are developed with PHP, so you can't go wrong with that.
Both Windows and Linux come in many flavors. All the flavors of Windows come from Microsoft, the various distributions of Linux come from different companies (i.e. Linspire, Red Hat, SuSE, Ubuntu, Xandros, Knoppix, Slackware, Lycoris, etc. ). Windows has two main lines. The older flavors are referred to as "Win9x" and consist of Windows 95, 98, 98SE and Me. The newer flavors are referred to as "NT class" and consist of Windows NT3, NT4, 2000, XP and Vista. Going back in time, Windows 3.x preceded Windows 95 by a few years. And before that, there were earlier versons of Windows, but they were not popular. Microsoft no longer supports Windows NT3, NT4, all the 9x versions and of course anything older. Support for Windows 2000 is partial (as of April 2007). The flavors of Linux are referred to as distributions (often shortened to "distros"). All the Linux distributions released around the same time frame will use the same kernel (the guts of the Operating System). They differ in the add-on software provided, GUI, install process, price, documentation and technical support. Both Linux and Windows come in desktop and server editions.
My problem has always been security, I do recommend the Linux but when you are placed in charge of a dedicated server you are responsible for anything that happens on it and to it, if you don't know and don't want to learn how to secure your box it would be easier to and less time consuming to get a Windows server, you are already familiar to the way it works and how to install and run programs. Most who have used and worked with Linux wouldn't even ask, therefore I assume you don't, I recommend Linux because you do have the time and want to learn more than just setting up website.
As stated above, it basically comes down to what you are going to be using the server for, and your personal preference. Although you can run PHP and Perl on Windows, they were originally built for Linux which is also cheaper than a Windows server. Since Windows Server is not a free product you're almost always in a situation where you will be paying more for a Windows server then a Linux server. Price isn't everything though, as I find Linux to be more dependable in different situations.
Unless you specifically are tied to some MS functionality requirement, Linux/BSD and Apache will prove to be more reliable, safer and have more uptime. We have some Centos servers that only have been rebooted because we powered them down to move them in the rack. Until MS (if ever) protects the kernel of the core O.S. dll's it will never be secure, no matter. I will not permit a MS server to have a direct connection to the Internet, only if they are proxied behind a BSD server.
My vote goes for Linux server also. I'm a perl programmer, and windows is terrible for perl (cgi) scripts.