What is Apache web server?

[Ritu]

While selecting for a secure hosting provider I encounter the term Apache web server. Can you explain to me what is it? Is it compatible with Linux?

[Krishnan]

Apache web server is a free and open-source web server that is designed to build web servers with the ability to host one or more HTTP- based websites. It supports multiple programming languages and server-side scripting.
The web hosting providers use it to provide you with shared and virtual hosting. It is compatible with Linux and Windows as well.

[Pallavi]

A popular open-source, cross-platform web server, Apache is actively maintained by the Apache Software Foundation.
You get a complete range of features such as CGI, ​SSL, and virtual domains, etc. It also supports plug-in modules for extensibility.

Reasons to use Apache HTTP server:
Apache is free for both personal as well as commercial uses, so you don't have worry about the payment and this is the most important benefit of it.

Additionally, it is a reliable software framework and is actively maintained, so it gets frequent feature security patches, upgrades and vulnerability improvements.

Being a free and updated product, it doesn't save on features. Rather, it is one of the most feature-filled HTTP web servers available, which is another reason for it to be so popular.

Apache supports the below things:

• Password authentication and digital certificates
• Customizable error messages
• Websites along with it's virtual hosting capabilities
• Proxy services
• SSL and TLS
• GZIP compression to speed up web pages

[Keeran]

Apache is an open source and free web server which is a fast, secure and reliable to use. Web server looks for the pages that you have requested and fetches it for you to view.
The web server handles your requests by making sure that other modules are ready to serve you. It also cleans the memory, cache, and modules to make them available for other customers. Apache is developed in the same manner as a Linux operating system, thus it is compatible with Linux. And its version from Apache 2.4 is compatible with Windows also.      

[Ritu]

Thank you for your well-educating guidelines.