Container is a term that describes an isolated IT hosting environment which runs its own Operating System (OS) alone, which might or might not be a different type of OS than the one of the underlying physical server (infrastructure). Unlike the other Virtual Servers (Virtual Machines), the so-called Containers are created through a virtualization technique called OS Virtualization. It is a software assisted virtualization, which allows any computer hardware to run multiple instances with separate OS concurrently.

The instances (VEs), also containers, work like a separate, real computers. Any software application running on a standard  Operating System can use all resources – CPU power, memory and other computing resources as well as files and folders – of a Container based computer.

Containers crated thought an OS Operating virtualization does not feature the same level of flexibility as the Virtual Machines created with full virtualization, for example. A Container cannot use an OS different from the one that runs on the underlying physical server, or a different guest kernel. If the underlying host runs any Linux distribution, the Containers that run on top of it cannot run Windows.

The term (phase) “Linux Hosting” refers to a web hosting service provided form a Linux OS (Unix) based web server. Various Liunux distributions are used as server operating systems. Most of the well known, reliable Internet hosting providers run Linux distributions on their web servers.

Linux OS and Linux based servers are very popular because of the open source software collaboration, which allows the source code to be used, modified and redistributed from anyone. The distribution could be commercial or non-commercial under the GNU General Public License. The Linux OS is packaged in a format known as a Linux distribution. Some of the most popular Linux distributions used on web servers are Red Hat Enterprice Linux, CentOS, Debian, (Ubuntu), Fedora and openSUSE.

Often the term Linux Hosting refers to L.A.M.P Hosting service.