Europe's web hosting boom has given Linux distributions
from SuSE Linux, MandrakeSoft, the Gentoo Foundation and Debian a
boost, giving the market leader Red Hat a run for its money,
according to new statistics from Netcraft.
While Red Hat's software is continuing to grab more websites,
its market share of Linux servers fell slightly over the past six
months, from 50.8% to 49.8%, according to Netcraft.
By only analysing servers connected to the web (so back-end
systems or the majority of web servers that do not identify
themselves are not included), the figures are not accurate, but
they are considered a good indicator of server trends.
The latest survey indicates that competition is thriving in the
Linux world, partly because of regional preferences and the Red
Hat's controversial new licensing regime.
The fastest-growing distribution between January and July was
Gentoo, also one of the smallest in terms of market share: from
0.7% of the market to 1%, with nearly 30,000 sites - a growth rate
of 49.5%. Mandrake Linux, popular in France, grew 15.3% to 1.3% of
the market with just over 37,000 sites. Germany's SuSE Linux - now
owned by Novell - grew 15.6% to 11.8% of the market and more than
347,000 sites. Debian grew 14.5% to 15.9% of the market and more
than 468,000 sites - previously Debian had been the fastest-growing
distribution.
While Red Hat has traditionally dominated in the US, growth in
Europe is changing the picture, Netcraft said.
"The gains by Debian, SuSE and Gentoo have been helped by the
continued growth of the hosting market in Europe, where these
distributions have their largest users," said Netcraft's Rich
Miller.
Debian has two major hosting providers in France, SuSE's four
biggest hosting customers are in Germany, and a third of Gentoo's
sites are housed at Denmark's Forskningsnetten and Germany's
Dotcom-server, Netcraft said.
Cobalt is also seeing significant growth, at 13.3%, taking 20.3%
of the market - even though Sun Microsystems discontinued its last
Cobalt product in November.
In December, Sun released the Rom source code for the RaQ 550
under an open-source licence, a year after opening the Cobalt Qube
source. These moves allow users to customise their Cobalt boxes
without the need for external technical support or licensing, a
low-cost arrangement that has appealed to many customers, according
to Miller.
A controversial new licensing regime at Red Hat, which requires
a $349 (£188) annual subscription for each server, has led many
customers to eye up competitors, Miller said.
Many shared hosting companies, where tens or hundreds of
thousands of sites are collectively administered as part of a
single system, have found it cheaper to use internal IT staff
rather than subscribe to external support, according to
Netcraft.
"Hosting companies, which represent some of the larger Linux
installations, began reassessing the economics of Red Hat last
summer," Miller said.
Also popular with shared hosting companies is FreeBSD, a flavour
of Unix distributed under an open-source licence.
The platform is not included with the Linux numbers, but has
been popular with hosting companies since the dawn of the web, and
is continuing to grow. More than two million active sites use
FreeBSD - about one million more than Red Hat, according to
Netcraft.
Matthew Broersma writes for Techworld.com