Linux is an OS, which isn't that commonly used for desktop machines, but is amongst the most commonly used OSs for web servers. It is totally free, so you shall not have to pay any license costs as part of your website hosting payments. Linux is furthermore thought to be the most reliable OS these days and thanks to the permissions which files have and the file types that can be run, virus files which can infect a normal PC will simply not be executed on a Linux-based server. In addition, the Operating System is 100 % free, so it can easily be customized without any constraints, so as to suit the needs of the website hosting provider and their customers. This also implies that unnecessary software packages can be removed to make the Operating system lighter and swifter, which could directly contribute to a lot better server performance. A lot of Linux machines have the Apache web server set up on them, since this software is also absolutely free, quick and secure. It's the most popular web server out there and is an element of the LAMP bundle that numerous script applications, including Joomla™ and WordPress, need. LAMP is an abbreviation for Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP.