Linux is an OS, which isn't that commonly used for desktop machines, but is amongst the most widely used OSs for web servers. It's absolutely free, so you won't need to pay any license costs as part of your website hosting payments. Linux is furthermore thought to be the most secure Operating System available and due to the permissions which files have as well as the file types that can be run, virus files that may infect an average personal computer will simply not be executed on a Linux-based web server. In addition, the OS is totally free, so it can be customized without any limits, as a way to suit the needs of the web hosting provider and their customers. This also means that unneeded software packages can be removed to make the OS lighter and a lot quicker, which can directly lead to significantly better server performance. A lot of Linux machines have the Apache web server set up on them, since this application is also free, fast and stable. It's the most widely used web server out there and is an element of the LAMP bundle that many script applications, such as Joomla and WordPress, need. LAMP is an abbreviation for Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP.