OS/Linux Distributions using Apache

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You are viewing an outdated report. The latest version of this report was published on October 1st, 2024

April 1st, 2005

Report Description

The Apache server has in virtually any unbiased metric available (either from us or elsewhere) a majority market share in the web server market. Couple this with the fact that Apache will often provide hints as to the nature of the host OS it is running on, and one can view trends of linux distributions, how specialty OS' are performing in the server market and so on.

Methodology

The principal is simple: when issuing a request for a page to an Apache web server, the response received consists of HTTP Response Headers as well as the body of the web page being requested. For example, consider if we connect to a host on port 80 and request the root document. Our transaction might look something like this:


$ telnet 192.168.1.1 80
Trying 192.168.1.1...
Connected to 192.168.1.1.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET / HTTP/1.0

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2008 16:24:24 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.3 (Debian) DAV/2 PHP/4.4.4-8+etch4 mod_perl/2.0.2 Perl/v5.8.8
Last-Modified: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 14:01:07 GMT
ETag: "62c786-15eb-43c23eac2cec0"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 5611
MS-Author-Via: DAV
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/strict.dtd">

<html>
...<snip>
</html>

The above response headers show the Server: header indicating the version of Apache, various add-on modules, as well as the fact that this platform is running the Debian linux distribution.

Reporting by Hostname (Sample size: 2,611,599 web sites)

It should be noted that not all web servers will report back the Host OS signature. In an Apache configuration file, the ServerTokens directive can be used to to disable the disclosure of this information. Only configurations that do not specify the ServerTokens directive, or set it to Full may reveal sufficient information to allow disclosure of the OS and distribution hosting the server.

In this month's survey, 9,835,316 Apache servers were detected, but only 2,611,599 (26.55%) revealed sufficient information to detect the host OS. The remainder of the survey by host information shown below is based on this subset of Apache servers that revealed the host OS.

OS/Distribution March 2005
Hostname Count March 2005
% February 2005
Hostname Count February 2005
% Growth
%

Red Hat 1,034,823 39.62 1,324,646 38.57 2.73

Debian 492,458 18.86 559,484 16.29 15.75

SuSE 282,886 10.83 280,261 8.16 32.73

Fedora 282,504 10.82 564,295 16.43 -34.17

Sun Cobalt 178,895 6.85 181,574 5.29 29.56

Windows 99,942 3.83 106,063 3.09 23.91

FreeBSD 60,218 2.31 59,212 1.72 33.74

Gentoo 50,415 1.93 219,868 6.40 -69.85

Darwin 43,573 1.67 42,206 1.23 35.76

Mandriva 35,811 1.37 42,850 1.25 9.90

CentOS 13,651 0.52 10,889 0.32 64.86

Netware 5,232 0.20 5,061 0.15 35.94

UnitedLinux 4,595 0.18 4,423 0.13 36.61

White Box 4,003 0.15 3,113 0.09 69.10

Trustix 3,904 0.15 11,345 0.33 -54.75

IBM 3,536 0.14 3,524 0.10 31.95

Oracle 2,655 0.10 2,629 0.08 32.80

ALT Linux 2,620 0.10 2,490 0.07 38.37

Turbolinux 2,591 0.10 2,594 0.08 31.35

Mac OS X 1,513 0.06 1,680 0.05 18.43

ASPLinux 1,116 0.04 1,072 0.03 36.90

Tao 730 0.03 683 0.02 40.55

Ubuntu 624 0.02 1,040 0.03 -21.10

Aurox 584 0.02 590 0.02 30.16

OpenPKG 518 0.02 502 0.01 35.69

OS/2 459 0.02 460 0.01 31.22

OpenVMS 413 0.02 410 0.01 32.46

Yellow Dog 335 0.01 352 0.01 25.15

Miracle 275 0.01 262 0.01 38.03

BlueQuartz 165 0.01 125 0.00 73.58

OpenNA 164 0.01 240 0.01 -10.14

RedFlag 94 0.00 106 0.00 16.61

ClarkConnect 58 0.00 30 0.00 154.24

Asianux 50 0.00 47 0.00 39.89

EasiLiX 37 0.00 33 0.00 47.44

iSeries 37 0.00 37 0.00 31.50

Haansoft 25 0.00 20 0.00 64.38

StartCom 23 0.00 14 0.00 116.04

Cygwin 17 0.00 19 0.00 17.66

Solaris 17 0.00 11 0.00 103.23

Ark 13 0.00 6 0.00 184.92

Novell 9 0.00 8 0.00 47.94

Lineox 4 0.00 1 0.00 426.00

OpenBSD 3 0.00 3 0.00 31.50

Momonga 3 0.00 1 0.00 294.50

cAos 1 0.00 1 0.00 31.50

Reporting by Installation (Sample size: 442,214 IP Addresses)

The following graph and table are based on the same underlying data set as in the previous graphs and table, but with the distinction that we count unique IP addresses instead of unique hostnames, thus getting a more accurate representation of the number of actual web servers installed. (See Web Survey by IP for more details).

In this month's survey, 1,468,164 distinct IP Addresses hosted Apache servers, but only 442,214 (30.12%) revealed sufficient information to detect the host OS. The data below is based on this subset of servers that revealed the host OS.

OS/Distribution March 2005
IP Address Count March 2005
% February 2005
IP Address Count February 2005
% Growth
%

Red Hat 186,478 42.17 187,170 43.20 -2.39

Debian 60,959 13.78 59,121 13.65 1.02

Fedora 54,372 12.30 49,530 11.43 7.55

SuSE 33,848 7.65 32,572 7.52 1.81

Sun Cobalt 29,863 6.75 30,683 7.08 -4.64

Windows 28,718 6.49 27,950 6.45 0.67

Darwin 13,457 3.04 13,089 3.02 0.73

Gentoo 7,554 1.71 7,135 1.65 3.73

Mandriva 7,472 1.69 7,662 1.77 -4.45

FreeBSD 5,892 1.33 5,412 1.25 6.67

Netware 3,425 0.77 3,321 0.77 1.04

CentOS 1,358 0.31 975 0.23 36.46

Turbolinux 1,289 0.29 1,301 0.30 -2.93

Oracle 1,234 0.28 1,228 0.28 -1.55

IBM 1,026 0.23 1,044 0.24 -3.71

UnitedLinux 898 0.20 883 0.20 -0.36

Trustix 886 0.20 853 0.20 1.77

White Box 820 0.19 764 0.18 5.16

ALT Linux 418 0.09 411 0.09 -0.36

ASPLinux 366 0.08 342 0.08 4.85

Mac OS X 362 0.08 403 0.09 -11.99

Ubuntu 245 0.06 202 0.05 18.83

OpenVMS 205 0.05 206 0.05 -2.50

Miracle 181 0.04 168 0.04 5.56

Tao 171 0.04 161 0.04 4.06

Aurox 138 0.03 134 0.03 0.90

OS/2 127 0.03 127 0.03 -2.02

OpenPKG 88 0.02 89 0.02 -3.13

Yellow Dog 86 0.02 94 0.02 -10.36

OpenNA 65 0.01 65 0.02 -2.02

BlueQuartz 49 0.01 24 0.01 100.03

Asianux 34 0.01 32 0.01 4.10

ClarkConnect 26 0.01 17 0.00 49.85

iSeries 22 0.00 22 0.01 -2.02

Haansoft 17 0.00 14 0.00 18.97

RedFlag 17 0.00 20 0.00 -16.72

Cygwin 12 0.00 13 0.00 -9.56

Novell 9 0.00 8 0.00 10.22

EasiLiX 6 0.00 4 0.00 46.96

StartCom 6 0.00 3 0.00 95.95

Ark 4 0.00 2 0.00 95.95

Solaris 4 0.00 3 0.00 30.63

Lineox 3 0.00 1 0.00 193.93

OpenBSD 2 0.00 2 0.00 -2.02

Momonga 1 0.00 1 0.00 -2.02

cAos 1 0.00 1 0.00 -2.02

Note: Readers are cautioned that the Growth percentages are based on a server's market share penetration rather than the absolute number of servers we detected. Thus, it is possible for the number of servers to increase, while the growth is actually a negative value.

OS/Distribution	March 2005 Hostname Count	March 2005 %	February 2005 Hostname Count	February 2005 %	Growth %
Red Hat	1,034,823	39.62	1,324,646	38.57	2.73
Debian	492,458	18.86	559,484	16.29	15.75
SuSE	282,886	10.83	280,261	8.16	32.73
Fedora	282,504	10.82	564,295	16.43	-34.17
Sun Cobalt	178,895	6.85	181,574	5.29	29.56
Windows	99,942	3.83	106,063	3.09	23.91
FreeBSD	60,218	2.31	59,212	1.72	33.74
Gentoo	50,415	1.93	219,868	6.40	-69.85
Darwin	43,573	1.67	42,206	1.23	35.76
Mandriva	35,811	1.37	42,850	1.25	9.90
CentOS	13,651	0.52	10,889	0.32	64.86
Netware	5,232	0.20	5,061	0.15	35.94
UnitedLinux	4,595	0.18	4,423	0.13	36.61
White Box	4,003	0.15	3,113	0.09	69.10
Trustix	3,904	0.15	11,345	0.33	-54.75
IBM	3,536	0.14	3,524	0.10	31.95
Oracle	2,655	0.10	2,629	0.08	32.80
ALT Linux	2,620	0.10	2,490	0.07	38.37
Turbolinux	2,591	0.10	2,594	0.08	31.35
Mac OS X	1,513	0.06	1,680	0.05	18.43
ASPLinux	1,116	0.04	1,072	0.03	36.90
Tao	730	0.03	683	0.02	40.55
Ubuntu	624	0.02	1,040	0.03	-21.10
Aurox	584	0.02	590	0.02	30.16
OpenPKG	518	0.02	502	0.01	35.69
OS/2	459	0.02	460	0.01	31.22
OpenVMS	413	0.02	410	0.01	32.46
Yellow Dog	335	0.01	352	0.01	25.15
Miracle	275	0.01	262	0.01	38.03
BlueQuartz	165	0.01	125	0.00	73.58
OpenNA	164	0.01	240	0.01	-10.14
RedFlag	94	0.00	106	0.00	16.61
ClarkConnect	58	0.00	30	0.00	154.24
Asianux	50	0.00	47	0.00	39.89
EasiLiX	37	0.00	33	0.00	47.44
iSeries	37	0.00	37	0.00	31.50
Haansoft	25	0.00	20	0.00	64.38
StartCom	23	0.00	14	0.00	116.04
Cygwin	17	0.00	19	0.00	17.66
Solaris	17	0.00	11	0.00	103.23
Ark	13	0.00	6	0.00	184.92
Novell	9	0.00	8	0.00	47.94
Lineox	4	0.00	1	0.00	426.00
OpenBSD	3	0.00	3	0.00	31.50
Momonga	3	0.00	1	0.00	294.50
cAos	1	0.00	1	0.00	31.50

OS/Distribution	March 2005 IP Address Count	March 2005 %	February 2005 IP Address Count	February 2005 %	Growth %
Red Hat	186,478	42.17	187,170	43.20	-2.39
Debian	60,959	13.78	59,121	13.65	1.02
Fedora	54,372	12.30	49,530	11.43	7.55
SuSE	33,848	7.65	32,572	7.52	1.81
Sun Cobalt	29,863	6.75	30,683	7.08	-4.64
Windows	28,718	6.49	27,950	6.45	0.67
Darwin	13,457	3.04	13,089	3.02	0.73
Gentoo	7,554	1.71	7,135	1.65	3.73
Mandriva	7,472	1.69	7,662	1.77	-4.45
FreeBSD	5,892	1.33	5,412	1.25	6.67
Netware	3,425	0.77	3,321	0.77	1.04
CentOS	1,358	0.31	975	0.23	36.46
Turbolinux	1,289	0.29	1,301	0.30	-2.93
Oracle	1,234	0.28	1,228	0.28	-1.55
IBM	1,026	0.23	1,044	0.24	-3.71
UnitedLinux	898	0.20	883	0.20	-0.36
Trustix	886	0.20	853	0.20	1.77
White Box	820	0.19	764	0.18	5.16
ALT Linux	418	0.09	411	0.09	-0.36
ASPLinux	366	0.08	342	0.08	4.85
Mac OS X	362	0.08	403	0.09	-11.99
Ubuntu	245	0.06	202	0.05	18.83
OpenVMS	205	0.05	206	0.05	-2.50
Miracle	181	0.04	168	0.04	5.56
Tao	171	0.04	161	0.04	4.06
Aurox	138	0.03	134	0.03	0.90
OS/2	127	0.03	127	0.03	-2.02
OpenPKG	88	0.02	89	0.02	-3.13
Yellow Dog	86	0.02	94	0.02	-10.36
OpenNA	65	0.01	65	0.02	-2.02
BlueQuartz	49	0.01	24	0.01	100.03
Asianux	34	0.01	32	0.01	4.10
ClarkConnect	26	0.01	17	0.00	49.85
iSeries	22	0.00	22	0.01	-2.02
Haansoft	17	0.00	14	0.00	18.97
RedFlag	17	0.00	20	0.00	-16.72
Cygwin	12	0.00	13	0.00	-9.56
Novell	9	0.00	8	0.00	10.22
EasiLiX	6	0.00	4	0.00	46.96
StartCom	6	0.00	3	0.00	95.95
Ark	4	0.00	2	0.00	95.95
Solaris	4	0.00	3	0.00	30.63
Lineox	3	0.00	1	0.00	193.93
OpenBSD	2	0.00	2	0.00	-2.02
Momonga	1	0.00	1	0.00	-2.02
cAos	1	0.00	1	0.00	-2.02