Over the last six months Debian has been the fastest growing Linux distribution when measured by counting active sites which contain the name of a Linux distribution in the Apache Server header. In percentage terms Debian is closely followed by SuSE and Gentoo. RedHat has a far greater number of sites but a slower growth rate, and actually fell this month, after making widely publicized and controversial changes to its licencing and security update policy. A distribution name is present in a little over a quarter of Linux based Apache sites.
| Distribution | July 2003 | January 2004 | Growth Rate |
| Debian | 355,469 | 442,752 | 24.6% |
| SuSE | 240,411 | 296,217 | 23.2% |
| Gentoo | 20,273 | 24,229 | 19.5% |
| RedHat | 1,231,986 | 1,451,505 | 17.8% |
| Mandrake | 51,299 | 52,543 | 2.4% |
| Cobalt | 553,012 | 548,963 | -0.7% |
The trend over the second half of 2003 and to date is as follows:
