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You are viewing an outdated report.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

February 1st, 2023

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: 2,871,456 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, 17,042,652 Apache servers were detected, but only 2,871,456 (16.85%) 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 January 2023
Hostname Count January 2023
% December 2022
Hostname Count December 2022
% Growth
%

Debian 912,716 31.79 927,930 31.98 -0.61

Ubuntu 881,973 30.72 858,297 29.58 3.83

CentOS 849,916 29.60 887,439 30.59 -3.23

FreeBSD 68,197 2.37 69,123 2.38 -0.31

Windows 67,909 2.36 67,850 2.34 1.13

Red Hat 35,101 1.22 34,871 1.20 1.71

Fedora 29,546 1.03 29,867 1.03 -0.04

SuSE 17,959 0.63 17,747 0.61 2.25

Scientific Linux 2,405 0.08 2,443 0.08 -0.53

Gentoo 1,625 0.06 1,659 0.06 -1.03

Oracle 1,441 0.05 1,468 0.05 -0.81

Turbolinux 1,030 0.04 1,057 0.04 -1.54

Darwin 410 0.01 429 0.01 -3.43

Mandriva 248 0.01 280 0.01 -10.50

Sun Cobalt 217 0.01 218 0.01 0.58

Trustix 195 0.01 195 0.01 1.05

Mac OS X 95 0.00 100 0.00 -4.01

OS/2 90 0.00 94 0.00 -3.25

ASPLinux 66 0.00 81 0.00 -17.67

OpenVMS 58 0.00 58 0.00 1.05

Netware 54 0.00 51 0.00 6.99

OpenPKG 49 0.00 49 0.00 1.05

ALT Linux 37 0.00 37 0.00 1.05

IBM 34 0.00 34 0.00 1.05

BlueQuartz 33 0.00 33 0.00 1.05

APMServ 23 0.00 27 0.00 -13.92

Asianux 10 0.00 10 0.00 1.05

White Box 8 0.00 8 0.00 1.05

OpenNA 6 0.00 6 0.00 1.05

UnitedLinux 2 0.00 0 0.00 N/A

Lineox 2 0.00 2 0.00 1.05

ClarkConnect 1 0.00 1 0.00 1.05

iSeries 0 0.00 2 0.00 -100.00

Reporting by Installation (Sample size: 372,105 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, 1,531,570 distinct IP Addresses hosted Apache servers, but only 372,105 (24.30%) 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 January 2023
IP Address Count January 2023
% December 2022
IP Address Count December 2022
% Growth
%

Ubuntu 155,272 41.73 157,123 41.45 0.67

CentOS 91,108 24.48 93,154 24.58 -0.37

Debian 90,805 24.40 92,885 24.50 -0.42

Windows 11,770 3.16 12,280 3.24 -2.37

FreeBSD 9,327 2.51 9,480 2.50 0.22

Red Hat 4,996 1.34 5,133 1.35 -0.85

Fedora 4,730 1.27 4,772 1.26 0.97

SuSE 2,467 0.66 2,538 0.67 -0.98

Scientific Linux 641 0.17 653 0.17 -0.01

Oracle 332 0.09 341 0.09 -0.82

Turbolinux 166 0.04 174 0.05 -2.82

Darwin 106 0.03 109 0.03 -0.94

Mandriva 88 0.02 97 0.03 -7.59

Sun Cobalt 66 0.02 67 0.02 0.34

Gentoo 55 0.01 58 0.02 -3.40

OpenVMS 28 0.01 29 0.01 -1.65

Netware 24 0.01 23 0.01 6.29

OpenPKG 21 0.01 21 0.01 1.87

APMServ 15 0.00 17 0.00 -10.12

OS/2 14 0.00 15 0.00 -4.93

Trustix 13 0.00 13 0.00 1.87

IBM 11 0.00 11 0.00 1.87

ASPLinux 11 0.00 14 0.00 -19.96

Mac OS X 8 0.00 8 0.00 1.87

BlueQuartz 8 0.00 8 0.00 1.87

ALT Linux 7 0.00 7 0.00 1.87

Asianux 5 0.00 5 0.00 1.87

White Box 4 0.00 4 0.00 1.87

OpenNA 3 0.00 3 0.00 1.87

Lineox 2 0.00 2 0.00 1.87

ClarkConnect 1 0.00 1 0.00 1.87

UnitedLinux 1 0.00 0 0.00 N/A

iSeries 0 0.00 1 0.00 -100.00

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	January 2023 Hostname Count	January 2023 %	December 2022 Hostname Count	December 2022 %	Growth %
Debian	912,716	31.79	927,930	31.98	-0.61
Ubuntu	881,973	30.72	858,297	29.58	3.83
CentOS	849,916	29.60	887,439	30.59	-3.23
FreeBSD	68,197	2.37	69,123	2.38	-0.31
Windows	67,909	2.36	67,850	2.34	1.13
Red Hat	35,101	1.22	34,871	1.20	1.71
Fedora	29,546	1.03	29,867	1.03	-0.04
SuSE	17,959	0.63	17,747	0.61	2.25
Scientific Linux	2,405	0.08	2,443	0.08	-0.53
Gentoo	1,625	0.06	1,659	0.06	-1.03
Oracle	1,441	0.05	1,468	0.05	-0.81
Turbolinux	1,030	0.04	1,057	0.04	-1.54
Darwin	410	0.01	429	0.01	-3.43
Mandriva	248	0.01	280	0.01	-10.50
Sun Cobalt	217	0.01	218	0.01	0.58
Trustix	195	0.01	195	0.01	1.05
Mac OS X	95	0.00	100	0.00	-4.01
OS/2	90	0.00	94	0.00	-3.25
ASPLinux	66	0.00	81	0.00	-17.67
OpenVMS	58	0.00	58	0.00	1.05
Netware	54	0.00	51	0.00	6.99
OpenPKG	49	0.00	49	0.00	1.05
ALT Linux	37	0.00	37	0.00	1.05
IBM	34	0.00	34	0.00	1.05
BlueQuartz	33	0.00	33	0.00	1.05
APMServ	23	0.00	27	0.00	-13.92
Asianux	10	0.00	10	0.00	1.05
White Box	8	0.00	8	0.00	1.05
OpenNA	6	0.00	6	0.00	1.05
UnitedLinux	2	0.00	0	0.00	N/A
Lineox	2	0.00	2	0.00	1.05
ClarkConnect	1	0.00	1	0.00	1.05
iSeries	0	0.00	2	0.00	-100.00

OS/Distribution	January 2023 IP Address Count	January 2023 %	December 2022 IP Address Count	December 2022 %	Growth %
Ubuntu	155,272	41.73	157,123	41.45	0.67
CentOS	91,108	24.48	93,154	24.58	-0.37
Debian	90,805	24.40	92,885	24.50	-0.42
Windows	11,770	3.16	12,280	3.24	-2.37
FreeBSD	9,327	2.51	9,480	2.50	0.22
Red Hat	4,996	1.34	5,133	1.35	-0.85
Fedora	4,730	1.27	4,772	1.26	0.97
SuSE	2,467	0.66	2,538	0.67	-0.98
Scientific Linux	641	0.17	653	0.17	-0.01
Oracle	332	0.09	341	0.09	-0.82
Turbolinux	166	0.04	174	0.05	-2.82
Darwin	106	0.03	109	0.03	-0.94
Mandriva	88	0.02	97	0.03	-7.59
Sun Cobalt	66	0.02	67	0.02	0.34
Gentoo	55	0.01	58	0.02	-3.40
OpenVMS	28	0.01	29	0.01	-1.65
Netware	24	0.01	23	0.01	6.29
OpenPKG	21	0.01	21	0.01	1.87
APMServ	15	0.00	17	0.00	-10.12
OS/2	14	0.00	15	0.00	-4.93
Trustix	13	0.00	13	0.00	1.87
IBM	11	0.00	11	0.00	1.87
ASPLinux	11	0.00	14	0.00	-19.96
Mac OS X	8	0.00	8	0.00	1.87
BlueQuartz	8	0.00	8	0.00	1.87
ALT Linux	7	0.00	7	0.00	1.87
Asianux	5	0.00	5	0.00	1.87
White Box	4	0.00	4	0.00	1.87
OpenNA	3	0.00	3	0.00	1.87
Lineox	2	0.00	2	0.00	1.87
ClarkConnect	1	0.00	1	0.00	1.87
UnitedLinux	1	0.00	0	0.00	N/A
iSeries	0	0.00	1	0.00	-100.00