I have developed an in house web based application for the company I work for. They have outsourced the IT support and the outsourced company has handed in their notice so we are looking for a new IT company. My boss found one with the problem that they don't support Linux servers so my boss wants me to transfer the web based app (php,mysql) on to a windows server which I think is a bad idea. Does anyone know of a few good arguments that I can give for staying on Linux? thanks
Seems like you think it's a bad idea, but don't know why exactly As a programmer you should know that in general there's no difference, as long as the web server is properly administrated. If there's no need to port your application for it to work on Apache/ISS/whatever under Windows, you shouldn't care. If, on the other hand, you would need to re-write half of the application for this occasion, you can always raise a non-issue like 'proprietary software is evil, more costly to maintain, etc'.
hmm there is no difference in my opinion. but somewhat Linux is more preferable by some users, and if you don't have to alter your application, don't feel hesitation to shift on window.
You should test your application and all the other applications you are using on your current server on a Windows box first before migration. Even PHP scripts need some tweaking to work on both Windows and Linux. Maybe that could be your argument.