Apache now serving Web sites on Windows 95/NT

The world's most popular Web server, Apache, will soon ship in a version forWindows 95 and NT 4.0. And you can't beat the price, because it's free, butit also includes the source code so that developers can modify the programas they see fit. Apache 1.3, which will also ship for a variety of UNIXvariants as usual, is the first version of the software to be ported to theso-called Win32 platforms, Windows 95 and NT.

According to Web survey, use of Apache is more than double its nearestcompetitor, Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS). To move to theWindows market, Apache's developers had to clean up the horrible UNIXinstallation process, which has been replaced with installation wizardsand utilities. To get Apache running on NT so quickly, its developerstook advantage of NT's little-used POSIX compliance layer, rather thanmake native calls to Win32 APIs. This will result in a Web server on NTthat doesn't match the performance of its UNIX brethren. Apache developerBrian Behlendorf admitted that performance isn't as good as it could be,but using POSIX allowed the port to proceed quickly.

"Without the POSIX layer, we would have been doing major rewriting," said Behlendorf. He said performance tuning of the NT version will be ongoing.Developers are also working on the next-generation Apache, version 2.0,which will be completely rewritten to take advantage of a new multitaskingmodel.

For more information, please visit the Apache HTTP Server Project