Other Web Servers

Apache may be number one in the web server business, but it is not the only one. Aside from IIS (a commercial web server product from Microsoft), several general-purpose web servers can run on Linux. Specialized web servers, such as the various Wiki engines, the Zope application server, and J2EE application servers, also run on Linux.

This section covers some of the server products that will run on SUSE Linux.

thttpd

This tiny server (only 129KB), included in SUSE Linux and installable via YaST, aims to be a simple, small, fast, and secure web server. It's not as feature rich as Apache or other server applications, but it does support CGI, Basic Authentication, virtual hosting, and bandwidth throttling.

Caudium WebServer

The Caudium WebServer is on par with Apache but again with different strengths and weaknesses. It is a nonforking, threaded web server. It offers a web-based configuration interface, templating with the RoXen Macro Language (RXML), Pike code embedding, and the Supports Database, a method through which the requesting browser's capabilities can be identified without using JavaScript in the web document. Caudium is not distributed with SUSE, but its source code can be downloaded from the project's home page.

Xitami

Xitami is a small, multithreaded and modular web server application that can also handle FTP requests. It supports direct support for CGI scripts written in Perl, Awk and Python, Basic Authentication, virtual hosting, on-the-fly server configuration, and server-side XML processing. Xitami is not distributed with SUSE, but the project's source code can be downloaded from its website.

Zope

Zope is an open-source web-application server written mostly in Python. It is included in SUSE Linux and is installable via YaST. (You learned a little about Zope, including how to install it, when you installed ZWiki in Chapter 16, "Collaborating with Others.")

Zope is an excellent content management framework and is geared toward serving dynamic pages. Zope can do its own web serving and has many of the same modules to do its work that Apache does, but it is often used together with Apache.

The best thing about Zope as a web server is that the simple web-based interface makes configuration much easier than with Apache.

ColdFusion

Macromedia's ColdFusion server bills itself as a fast way to create powerful web-based applications. It can run as a standalone application server, integrate with Apache, or work in conjunction with other J2EE solutions to serve CFML documents. The main benefits of the ColdFusion server is its Java underpinnings, which allow developers to use third-party Java code in their Internet applications, and tight integration with Macromedia's other technologies. Free trial and developer versions are available from the company's website.

TomCat

The TomCat servlet container is part of the Apache Foundation's open-source Jakarta project and embodies the industry's standard implementation for the servlets and JSP interfaces. It can be configured as a standalone application server or integrated with Apache to serve JSP pages. TomCat can handle CGI and SSL requests when acting as a standalone server. Other benefits are its Single Sign On feature and web-based configuration interface. TomCat can be downloaded from the project's website.