I don't think so. I think they are running linux in the background on the web server. I could be wrong tho, and If I am, I will have lost some respect for the devs.
Thank you for software info, but you haven't mentioned hardware...
BTW, why linux and not Win2003? I have been administering hardware and software for over 12 years and always on Win. Only one thing I have respect for when talking about linux is routing. There are couple of great linux dists for routing, much better then win2003 routing. But when talking about web server and SQL server, IMHO MS beats linux every single time, especially now when MSSQL2005 has free version. Little OT, I'm sorry.
I realise that you weren't addressing me, but here's my 2 pence worth anyway
At work I admin Windows boxes, have done for a long time. During my personal time I admin my own personal unix-like (linux, bsd, etc.) boxes.
Honestly, I much prefer linux, or similar, for web services over Windows.
1. I personally dislike IIS, and running Apache under Windows limits you to prefork basically (Apache is my web server of choice)
2. I like to save as much diskspace as possible for actual data - compare the sizes of a stock BSD or Linux distro to Windows 2003 Web Edition.
3. MSSQL 2005 is nice (mmm, love the improved replication), I'll give you that but decent free versions haven't been around for long (MSDE previously - which was shite)
4. Licencing costs
5. All that software in prepackaged repositories is easy to get at - the Windows world tends to have a well deserved reputation of shareware, payware, etc. rather than freeware
6. iptables. Need I say more?
7. Ethics (yes this is a pompous reason, but I believe a lot of software should be open source - ideally with a MIT compatible licence)
For a company, who wants to implement a non-web services infrastructure, I'd recommend a Windows network, purely because it is the easiest, and arguably the best solution. It costs more, but if a business is going to grow quickly then it's just easier to keep on top of. From my point of view (I remotely administrate over 20 windows networks of varying sizes and stages of evolution), Linux doesn't have the tools to do this without more faffing (I love GPO for instance - manually scripting each thing to deploy under psh and pfor would be a huge issue for our company - predominately because I'm the only non-windows experienced member of the techy team).
For web servers, standalone routers, etc. always unix-like OS'.
At the end of the day, we're not going to convince anyone else to move to a different OS I will say this though - if Linux, or similar, OS' linked up in a similar way that Windows domains do, in an easy fashion, then I'd be recommending it like a shot in all situations (mostly because I prefer how unix-like systems work). It just doesn't.
a dual xeon 2.4ghz system with 4gigs of mem and scsi hd.
This runs lfs.net, lfsworld.net (including pubstats / isonline), hosts skins, runs mysql, runs background stats-processing, insim relay, and all the other stuff a server does
and linux for all the reasons TAA stated. And I like how you can install a whole OS exactly the way you want it to. Ie. just the things you need and nothing more.
Wow! That is enough to run all that?! Just one box? I imagined at least two boxes, one for web and one for database. Your code must be very very optimized
well, not anymore actually. That's why during peak hours, the LFSW notices in-game are lagging. The stats processing (that should happen instantly) can't keep up anymore, so it falls behind. We've already made arrangements for a better server setup, so that in a few weeks we'll have enough power again to process everything instantly with room for more expansion.
btw, then we'll indeed have separate db and webservers to spread the load. Also the db server will be a nice 2 * quad core Xeon with 8gig and raid10 15000rpm sas drives, so that should be fine for a while
