In short, things can go wrong at places you might never imagine.
In details:
Web browsing works. Windows Server 2022+ preinstalls Microsoft Edge.
Gaming depends. Windows Server 2016+ have DirectX support, but greedy GPU makers may make it impossible to install drivers on Windows Server with the official installer. dism works better.
Entertainment also depends. Windows Server miss a lot of domestic features focused on this (given that you are talking about videos). Windows Server donât even preinstall sound feature (thatâs right playing sound is considered optional in Windows Server), luckily you can easily install it in Server Manager.
Hardwares depends yet again. Mostly because greedy hardware makers making drivers âincompatibleâ with Windows Server.
Laptops hardly works. Windows Server 2019+ doesnât have I2C drivers so say goodbye to your trackpad, touchscreen, etc. Windows Server also donât have complete power management so it doesnât sleep or hibernate.
Bluetooth & WiFi works. Windows Server 2025+ preinstalls wireless while old versions have it as an optional feature.
Time for the better things! Windows Server allows you to uninstall Edge.
Windows Server also allows you to uninstall Microsoft Defender which is near impossible in regular Windows.
Windows Server donât force you to use a Microsoft Account. In fact, Windows Server 2022- never officially supported one.
Windows Server by default donât automatically install updates. It only downloads them and you decide when to install. And thereâs no annoying popups urging you to update or to restart.
For reference, kernel-wise thatâs only true for Windows Server 2008+. 2003- actually have a different kernel.
Windows Server have a different platform ID (3 as opposed to 2 iirc in regular Windows) which actually matters in a lot of places, most notably some softwares will then see it as an âenterpriseâ environment and demand you to pay.
Activation-wise Windows Server donât allow you to use it without activating. It will restart itself every hour if you donât activate.
Thereâre also some other differences but listing all of these will make this stupid long
windows server design for server, not for collect user data and stuff so they just make it as simple as possible and make it ready to use right away out of the box
Something i discover by accident, when i output client IP address with $SERVER_[âREMOTE_ADDRâ], since my site is behind cloudflare, iâm expecting cloudflareâs IP, and then i need to grab the real IP from X-Forwarded-For, right? Not at all, it outputs the real client IP directly without doing anything else.
thatâs why if i ever see a 403 error, itâs from openresty, not nginx. ever since sites hosted here behind CF finally gets a proper cookie challenge, but also with lua scripting (i assume,) they just append the IP in X-Forwarded-For to remote address value thatâs given to Apache if such value is set! good job, ifastnet engineers!
OpenResty is based on NGINX. Itâs the same base software with the additional support for Lua scripting. They use this to add more advanced functionality to NGINX, which is also needed for it to handle the huge number of domains on free hosting effectively.
Updating the REMOTE_ADDR is very easy though, even with basic NGINX. The realip module lets you easily configure which hosts are proxying requests, and where the actual visitorâs IP address can be found, no Lua scripting required. Cloudflare probably has docs on how to set that up.
Itâs useful as both a convenience feature to you, but also for iFastNet to be able to track where website traffic is coming from so they can detect and block attacks more effectively.
All in all: itâs an easy fix with many benefits, not just for you.
