I am going to trade with IB and look like IB mainly just develops their socket with Java, so I will use Java to write my trading system. Seem like Windows 7 nowadays is stable enough that not much different from running in Linux like Ubuntu. My analysis time frame would be maximum 1 second per bar. So what is your setting and why? Do you think I should run with Ubuntu or Windows 7?
In ran my IB software on Linux prior to Windows 7, but migrated over as Windows 7 is/was a solid 64 bit OS. I'm almost exclusive in Java, so the migration took less than a day. Reason was that TWS seems to run better on Windows than Linux. At the time Swing had issues on Linux.
99% C# here - with some C++/CLI code to interface with one of my data providers (nanex - their only sensible API is C based). All based on WIndows. Can hardly await for the new Server (2012 R2) as it does some serious good things for Hyper-V (I run the trading in a virtual machine on a server I have in Chicago - NOT a rented VPS, I just prefer the safety of a hypervisor for various admin tasks).
If security of your server is of importance to you, I would strongly advise to a linux box (with a minimum of running services + intrusion detection/prevention software) ...
Which, obviously, is a stupid recommendation. Trading is not running a server. As such, it is perfectly ok to trade behind not only the pretty safe windows firewall but also a router that just does not route incoming connections (i.e. a very trivial NAT setup). Which is, btw., how I do it - one reason I have Hyper-V there, because it runs another virtual machine that right now serves are router (and actually establishes the virtual private network to my office). Things get more complex once you run a server that must be reachable from the outside (which a tradin system is not), but even then a LOT of LARGE websites have no problem running on a modern windows. Seriously, I do IT 20 years and the last time I saw a window system compromised that was not run by someone who should serve burgers at McDonalds instead of running a computer was the Slammer Virus. And that predates IIRC the year 2000. MS really got their act together. But again, this is a TOTAL non issue on a trading system that you can safely hide behind NAT.