What is the best VPS OS?

Most of clients already know what is the best VPS OS for them.

Users usually select OS depending on their previous experience or on their project requirements. We provide a wide variety of OS, enabling each customer to choose the one fitting their needs and expectations most.

Majority of tasks are best performed by servers running Linux/FreeBSD OS and we will provide a short list of their features below.

CentOS (Community Enterprise OS) is a free version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) OS. It is a separate branch of RHEL development tree, compatible with the majority of control panels (cPanel, DirectAdmin, ISP Manager, etc.), software and scripts for Linux-based systems. This OS setup is mostly conservative, allowing using the same architecture for extended periods of time and applying hotfixes if need be. Due to this policy CentOS users work with stable, reliable and predictable OS.

Centos 6.x is currently widely used, yet we still provide CentOS 5.x for customers who require this version for their software. We also support CentOS 7.x for customers who prefer starting their VPS experience with the most up-to-date OS and software available.

Fedora is another branch of RHEL development tree. Unlike CentOS it is developed rather fast, with updates being implemented quite often. This leads to situations when OS management differs much in different Fedora versions.

Both CentOS and Fedora are RHEL-based binary-compatible systems. This means some Fedora repositories, like EPEL, contain packages compatible with CentOS. However, differences between them make certain control panels and software compatible with CentOS, yet incompatible with Fedora.

Debian is a very popular Linux-based OS. However, it differs a lot from RHEL-based systems, while still sharing certain management features, which are common for all Linux systems. Debian shares conservative approach with CentOS, yet update packages are applied much more often and their number is significantly higher. This means compatibility with much wider amount of software. It is a stable and convenient system, overall.

Ubuntu is a Debian derivative, meaning it resembles origin a lot. However, this OS is more oriented on desktop or graphic interface solutions. It still can be used as a decent server OS.

FreeBSD is a popular Unix/BSD-based operating system. It differs from Linux family much, yet is widely used as a server OS. The main difference is the need to construct a system from packages based on specific hardware requirements. This provides a boost in performance as compared to Linux, yet required more time for installing and setting up a system. However, binary-compatible packages developed quite a lot recently, resulting in decrease of time expenses while retaining the same level of reliability.

Several famous hardware producers like Juniper even selected FreeBSD as a base for default OS of their products due to its specifics of network stack interaction and capability of dealing with huge amounts of traffic with ease. FreeBSD is often used as OS for highly-loaded routers or networks with high activity levels. It is also renown as a very secure OS, as critical vulnerabilities in FreeBSD are discovered much less frequently as compared to Linux systems.

Windows is mostly used as desktop OS, yet its server versions are also popular.If you are going to use Visual Basic, MSSQL or code in ASP .NET, you need Windows without any doubts.Being able to access your files via RDP while remaining within graphic interface you are used to is a great advantage of Windows environment.

To summarise, the best VPS OS is the one that fits your project’s needs. What really makes any OS great is support quality. We are sure HostZealot support is able to assist you with any issue and exceed your expectations. Just select the OS you like best and let us take care of the rest!