Web Performance, Inc. announced the release of two articles describing how the performance of the popular open source application server Tomcat differs on Windows and Linux.

Apache Tomcat is the official reference implementation of Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages, both specifications developed by Sun Microsystems under the Java Community Process. Apache Tomcat powers numerous large-scale, mission-critical web applications across a diverse range of industries and organizations. Users include such well-known companies such as WalMart and The Weather Channel.

The company said in their Press Release that, “Sun's release of their Java EE specifications has been followed by enthusiastic developers crafting powerful applications which can be seen on the web in businesses of every size. The result is one very hot topic continually focused on by many developer groups, but mature enough to be well known in all aspects of the industry. Some of the first questions that must be asked with any new project remain: what is the best starting point, and on what operating system should this application be deployed? These reports provide a guide as to what trade-offs can be expected before that decision is made.”

The Press Release went on to state that the reports look at the performance of Apache Tomcat on the Windows and Linux operating systems, and shows that Linux was able to handle about 32% more users than Windows on identical hardware and identical test conditions. “Testing performed against our Windows server gave users marginally shorter wait times by electing to turn away some traffic. Our Linux server, however, was able to scale to serving a greater number of users with reasonable responsiveness before it's maximum capacity was reached.”