March 2026 Download Stats: Growth, Visibility, and the “No‑Distro” Surge

Important note on terminology:

• “no distro” = downloads that can’t be attributed to a DNF distro/chroot (e.g. browser downloads, AI tools, scrapers, curl/wget, unknown clients, etc.)

TL;DR (highlights)

• Total downloads: 13,820 (up from 10,237 on 2026-02-02, +35.00%)
• Enterprise Linux (EL all) remains the largest distro family by volume (5,567), but its share dropped due to growth in “no distro”.
• “no distro” jumped to 25.81% of all downloads (3,567), becoming the biggest driver of overall growth.
• Source RPM (src) downloads spiked to 1,131 (8.18% of total) and are effectively entirely “no distro” in this report.
• EL10 is still the largest single distro line (3,620) and continues to show strong aarch64 adoption (~47%).
• Fedora 44 (beta) shows up as a new tracked entry (99 downloads).

Overall totals (2026-03-02)

Architecture ratio: x86_64:aarch64 ≈ 1.55:1

Distro family breakdown

What changed since 2026-02-02 (last snapshot)

Overall growth

• Total: 10,237 → 13,820 (+3,583 / +35.00%)
• x86_64: 6,186 → 7,631 (+1,445 / +23.36%)
• aarch64: 3,738 → 4,936 (+1,198 / +32.05%)
• noarch: 43 → 122 (+79 / +183.72%)
• src: 270 → 1,131 (+861 / +318.89%)

The big mix shift: “no distro”

• no distro: 809 → 3,567 (+2,758 / +340.91%)

This is the main reason the overall total jumped so strongly. It reflects a combination of:

• more non-DNF traffic being captured (browser/AI/scraper/etc.),
• plus real increases in direct visibility and automation activity.

Distro families: steady, but not the main growth driver

• EL all: 5,099 → 5,567 (+468 / +9.18%)
• Fedora all: 4,329 → 4,686 (+357 / +8.25%)

Both grew in absolute numbers, but their overall share decreased because “no distro” grew much faster.

Distribution details

Enterprise Linux

• EL10 remains the largest distro line: 3,620 downloads (26.19% of all downloads).
• EL10 aarch64 share: ( 1,702 / 3,620 \approx 47.0% )
• EL all aarch64 share: ( 2,515 / 5,567 \approx 45.2% )

Fedora

Notes:

• Fedora active (fc42/43/rawhide) grew, but modestly this month (+5.52%).
• fc41 (EOL) is still significant at 1,244 downloads (9.00% of total); it also grew this month.
• fc44 (beta) appearing is a good early signal that testers are already pulling packages.

Fedora aarch64 share:

• Fedora all aarch64 share: ( 1,289 / 4,686 \approx 27.5% )

A closer look at “no distro” and src traffic

In March, “no distro” is large and diverse:

Two key takeaways:

1. src downloads are concentrated here.
   • Fedora/EL rows show 0 src, while no distro shows 1,131 src.
   • Interpretation: the src spike is largely driven by non-DNF clients (automation, indexing, CI, scrapers, browser downloads), not by a sudden distro-side rebuild wave.
2. This month includes better attribution of non-DNF traffic.
   • Treat “no distro” as visibility + automation activity, not purely “end-user installs”.

Optional: “apples-to-apples” view (DNF-attributed only)

If we exclude “no distro” and look only at Fedora+EL (DNF-attributed):

• DNF-attributed total: ( 13,820 - 3,567 = 10,253 )
• x86_64: ( 3,380 + 3,044 = 6,424 ) → ~62.6%
• aarch64: ( 1,289 + 2,515 = 3,804 ) → ~37.1%
• noarch: ( 17 + 8 = 25 ) → ~0.24%

This makes it clearer that the overall x86_64 share drop is primarily a mix effect from the expanded “no distro” tracking.

Bottom line

March shows healthy distro growth in both Fedora and Enterprise Linux, with EL10 continuing to lead and ARM usage particularly strong in EL. The major headline, though, is the large increase in “no distro” traffic (scraper/AI/browser/etc.) and a significant rise in src downloads, which points to improved visibility and/or improved measurement of non-DNF download pathways.