⚡ Operating Systems in South Africa

Server operating systems are designed for computers that provide network services, such as hosting websites or storing data.

South Africa is an African country with a population of over 60 million people.

According to our research, operating systems are detected on 11.2% of websites from South Africa.

⭐ Most Popular in 2026

The following chart shows the top operating systems on websites in South Africa in 2026, based on market share.

The most popular is Linux with an impressive share of 52.4%, followed by Windows with 46.3% and Ubuntu with 15.4%.

Linux 52.4%
Windows 46.3%
Ubuntu 15.4%
CentOS 2.3%
Debian 2.1%
Unix 1.1%
AlmaLinux 1%
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 0.6%
Amazon Linux 0.3%
Rocky Linux 0.2%
FreeBSD 0.2%
SUSE Linux 0.05%

🚀 Highlights

Here is a list of the top systems that are more popular in South Africa than worldwide.
Differences between global and country rankings are shown in parentheses.

4. CentOS ^(-1)
7. AlmaLinux ^(-1)
9. Amazon Linux ^(-2)
12. SUSE Linux ^(-4)

✨ Best Operating Systems

Below is a more detailed list of 12 operating systems used on sites from South Africa, ranked by their market share.

Rank	Name	Market share
1	Linux San Francisco, California, United States A family of open-source, Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, originally created by Linus Torvalds and now maintained by a global community of contributors. FreeOpen source	52.4%
2	Windows Redmond, Washington, United States A family of proprietary operating systems from Microsoft used on personal computers, servers, and virtualized environments. $1,176+	46.3%
3	Ubuntu London, United Kingdom A free operating system based on Debian GNU/Linux, designed for use on desktops, laptops, servers, and mobile devices. FreeOpen source$500+/year	15.4%
4	CentOS Raleigh, North Carolina, United States A discontinued open-source Linux distribution compatible with RHEL. Legacy	2.3%
5	Debian New York, United States A free and open source Linux distribution. FreeOpen source	2.1%
6	Unix San Francisco, California, United States A family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems.	1.1%
7	AlmaLinux Estero, Florida, United States An open-source, community owned and governed, free enterprise Linux distribution focused on long-term stability. FreeOpen source	1%
8	Red Hat Enterprise Linux Raleigh, North Carolina, United States A commercial Linux distribution developed by Red Hat for the enterprise market. $383.90+	0.6%
9	Amazon Linux Seattle, Washington, United States A supported and maintained Linux image provided by Amazon Web Services for use on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. Free	0.3%
10	Rocky Linux Albany, California, United States An open-source enterprise operating system designed to be 100% bug-for-bug compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. FreeOpen source	0.2%
11	FreeBSD Boulder, Colorado, United States An open source Unix-like operating system designed for reliability, performance, and advanced networking across servers, desktops, and embedded systems. FreeOpen source	0.2%
12	SUSE Linux Nuremberg, Germany A Linux-based operating system developed by SUSE. FreeOpen source€477.24+/year	0.05%

👉 See Also

🌎 Operating Systems in other countries

Data is based on the analysis of 17,874 websites from South Africa.
Statistics were last calculated on April 2, 2026.
For details, see our methodology and disclaimer.