AWS Embraces Fedora Linux for Its Cloud-Based 'Amazon Linux' (zdnet.com) 71
ZDNet reports:
By and large, the public cloud runs on Linux. Most users, even Microsoft Azure customers, run Linux on the cloud. In the case of market giant Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud provider will let you run many Linux distros or their own homebrew Linux, Amazon Linux. Now, AWS has released an early version of its next distro, Amazon Linux 3, which is based on Red Hat's community Linux, Fedora.
AWS has long tried to incorporate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) compatibility into Amazon Linux, but this latest release takes that to new heights. By using Fedora as its upstream, the new Amazon distro, also called AL2022, is a stable distribution. It's gone through extensive testing to offer package stability, and it also includes all available security updates....
TechRadar adds some more details: The distro has had two major releases till now; the first in 2010, and the second in 2017. However, with the third AL2022 release the service is committing to a two year release cycle, with each release supported for a period of five years... AWS argues that the two year major release cycle, with updates shipped quarterly via minor releases, will help keep the software current, while the five year support commitment for each major release will give customers the stability they need to manage long project lifecycles.
AWS has long tried to incorporate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) compatibility into Amazon Linux, but this latest release takes that to new heights. By using Fedora as its upstream, the new Amazon distro, also called AL2022, is a stable distribution. It's gone through extensive testing to offer package stability, and it also includes all available security updates....
TechRadar adds some more details: The distro has had two major releases till now; the first in 2010, and the second in 2017. However, with the third AL2022 release the service is committing to a two year release cycle, with each release supported for a period of five years... AWS argues that the two year major release cycle, with updates shipped quarterly via minor releases, will help keep the software current, while the five year support commitment for each major release will give customers the stability they need to manage long project lifecycles.
IBM & Amazon (Score:2)
The unholy alliance.
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Get Microsoft in there to really snafu things up.
Logistics by Microsoft, programming by Amazon, budgeting by IBM.
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Fedora didn't work so well for me. (Score:5, Informative)
When I was using Fedora, updates commonly broke things. USUALLY, it was a matter of a few days to a week before a subsequent update would fix it. But not always. Major version updates would break things more permanently and sometimes render the system unbootable, requiring a full wipe and reinstall to fix.
I switched to Ubuntu and that problem never happened again.
Your mileage may vary, of course, but Ubuntu is in the list of what Amazon supports, and so are several others.
Lastly, in case this is relevant to you, Redhat likes to get into politics, pick sides, and participate in cancel culture, whereas Ubuntu stays out of it (as it was directed to do by its user base when it asked them).
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When was this? I haven't had any problems like that with Fedora in years. I have on occasion found a problem with a third-party repo, though.
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I switched to Ubuntu in June of this year, and the problems I was having with Fedora were the worst during the year prior to that.
Mostly the things that would break were my games, which I played through Lutris and Steam. My NVIDIA graphics drivers gave me trouble too, especially when Fedora pushed out an update that included a version of GCC that was different from the version that the kernel had been compiled with. They did that a couple times, as I recall.
Re:Fedora didn't work so well for me. (Score:4, Insightful)
Very interesting. And odd. I didn't think Fedora devs would ever roll out a new major compiler version with an ABI change without updating everything that might depend on it at the same time, including the kernel.
Sounds like your driver problems generally stem from the fact that Fedora is just too bleeding edge compared to Ubuntu. Fedora is the first to push new kernels, and often the first to push new compiler versions. So unless you're using an nividia kmod package from rpmfusion, the tarballs released by nvidia often break. That's understandably frustrating.
Personally I like Fedora and the bits that make it up (package manager, etc), but it's too fast paced and bleeding edge for me sometimes. I don't want to re-install every year, but I do want a bit more modern packages. I ran Centos 7 for years but eventually it got too hard to get things like the latest QGIS, a more recent Qt toolkit, inkscape, gimp, etc. Never quite cared for flatpaks, although they did work. I wonder if Centos Stream might be a better fit for me. While Ubunbu is okay, I just don't like it (or any debian-based distro). I know my way around a Fedora-style system. I really need something inbetween RHEL and Fedora.
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I wonder if Centos Stream might be a better fit for me.
It's unclear to me how, in practice, CentOS Stream is going to be differentiated from Fedora. Yes, I've read the boilerplate text IBM produced about it... but Stream probably just exists so IBM can pretend they didn't say "we're taking our ball and going home".
I think most of us figured this was the end game from the get-go, when Red Hat announced it would start "sponsoring" CentOS.
Oh well, thank goodness for AlmaLinux (which we've migrated to) and Rocky Linux.
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Your take is overly cynical. Been listening to actual RedHat employees talk about this and it's clear that most people complaining haven't really looked at what Stream is. CentOS Stream is very different from Fedora. It's a place where packages go before they hit the stable RHEL (or AlmaLinux) point release. Generally it will not have dramatically newer package versions than RHEL. Think of it as a beta of the next RHEL point release.
For my virtual servers, CentOS stream works just fine and provides the
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Think of it as a beta of the next RHEL point release
Well, except that it's not a beta. CentOS Stream is intended to be production-stable, and bugs in Stream are regarded as bugs in RHEL. Packages get all the same testing and QA before release in Stream that they traditionally have got before release in RHEL.
Packages are released in CentOS Stream when they're ready for RHEL. (However, in order to provide extended support for RHEL minor releases, Red Hat has to delay release of some types of updates until the next minor release.) There *is* a chance that a
Re: Fedora didn't work so well for me. (Score:2)
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Fedora is bleeding edge. It is not a production stable distribution by design and definition. And Centos is a copy of RHEL that has commensurately late/behind the times security patches because they have to do extra work to strip out the branding. I don't know why any operation uses this either. Ubuntu and Suse are the only ones really trustable, as they try not to push out shite pressure cookers and provide reasonably timely security fixes. They push out test releases.
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Yes, and I'd like something in between. Ubuntu sits here. And I use Ubuntu but I strongly prefer the way a Fedora distro is put together. I know my way around the way things are set up better than on debian-based distros.
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Fedora is bleeding edge. It is not a production stable distribution by design and definition
I don't know who told you that, but that is not the position of the Fedora organization. Fedora is intended to be a reliable OS, with 13 months of interface stability. It's production stable for many workloads.
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It's owned by Redhat who use it as the beta/gama (upstream source) for RHEL. That is what it is officially. Maybe you need to be better informed. It is not and never was intended as a production stable distribution.
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It is not, officially, a beta or gamma. And as a Fedora maintainer, I think I'm pretty well informed.
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I think you have your head up your ass. It's owned by Redhat who use it as the beta/gama (upstream source) for RHEL. That is what it is officially. Maybe you need to be better informed. It is not and never was intended as a production stable distribution.
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Very interesting. And odd. I didn't think Fedora devs would ever roll out a new major compiler version with an ABI change without updating everything that might depend on it at the same time, including the kernel.
That's because we don't. :)
Those sorts of changes can only be released in a new Fedora release, not during one.
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Very interesting. And odd. I didn't think Fedora devs would ever roll out a new major compiler version with an ABI change without updating everything that might depend on it at the same time, including the kernel.
You're credulously assuming this is a person who had real problems, and then jumping to an ABI change. Not because that is what happened, but because the person whining would be found to just be an idiot if there was no ABI change. And of course, there was no ABI change.
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Mostly the things that would break were my games, which...
nobody cares about on Linux.
especially when Fedora pushed out an update that included a version of GCC that was different from the version that the kernel had been compiled with
That's the smallest whine I've seen in years. Is that praising through faint insults?
Most people do want GCC updates. And they don't want kernel updates unless they fix something important.
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Sure, 20 years ago I wouldn't have been caught dead with a stock kernel. But these days, it is foolish to do that unless you're a kernel dev.
And it doesn't mean you can't build the Fedora kernel unless you revert GCC. The guy was building a third-party kernel module, and whining about having to install a build tool. It is perfectly normal to have to install something extra, even a slightly older compiler, to build third-party kernel modules. He's just a gamer who pretends to be know-y about the computer stu
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Things sometimes seem to go in cycles. I had similar problems back around 2000. I stopped paying attention when they discontinued the Professional Edition and switched to Debian. But around the time Mandrake Linux split from Red Hat, Mandrake was more stable. Wait a bit and Red Hat was the more stable. Wait abit an the distro to choose was Mepis. I can't put a timeline on this, but different distros seem to have stability problems at different times.
Currently I won't use Red Hat because they've optimi
Re:IBM & Amazon (Score:4, Informative)
Fedora is not IBM. IBM pays about 1/3 of developers, rest is pure voluntary effort.
IBM pays for 100% of RHEL engineers, who take Fedora build RHEL out of it. If you know Ubuntu, the agreement is similar to to Fedora = Debian, RHEL = Ubuntu, IBM = Canonical.
Re: IBM & Amazon (Score:1)
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IBM just spun off their legacy IT infrastructure division into a new company with $20B revenues.
IBM is now mostly a hybrid cloud and AI company. A big part of the value in hybrid cloud, compared to traditional cloud, is that you can run it on different providers, and also local.
So when you make a cloud app that runs on IBM's infrastructure, using IBM's tools, it can already also run on AWS.
It's natural in that context that Amazon would trust IBM's distro not to try to screw them. Portability to Amazon is on
Spin spin spin (Score:4, Insightful)
AWS has long tried to incorporate Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) compatibility into Amazon Linux, but this latest release takes that to new heights.
So much spin it makes me dizzy, but not enough to forget that they just mean CentOS is effectively gone.
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> CentOS is effectively gone.
So what's the difference between Fedora and CentOS of they're both the non-commercial RHEL?
---
In December 2020, Red Hat unilaterally terminated CentOS development.[15][16][17][18] In response, CentOS founder, Gregory Kurtzer, created the Rocky Linux project as a successor to the original mission of CentOS.[19] In March 2021, Cloud Linux (makers of CloudLinux OS) released a new RHEL derivative called AlmaLinux.[20]
While the distribution will be discontinued at the end of 2021,
Re:Spin spin spin (Score:4, Informative)
Fedora is not and never was a "non-commerical RHEL." Every few years a version of Fedora forms the base for RHEL. But other than that, they aren't related. Fedora is a fast-paced, bleeding-edge distribution.
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With new releases every 6 months and a 13-month support lifetime, Fedora is fast-paced compared to LTS distributions. But Fedora, the org, prefers not to describe the distribution as "bleeding-edge". It's intended to be a stable distribution (in both common senses of that word).
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Fedora is not and never was a "non-commerical RHEL." Every few years a version of Fedora forms the base for RHEL.
Right, Fedora is the alpha test plartform for RHEL. It's the bleedingest of bleeding edges.
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And you're the hyperobliest of hyperbole.
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If Amazon's choice were dictated by the changes to CentOS, you'd have seen Amazon adopt CentOS Stream, just like Facebook had. Fedora's a better base if they want to do most of their work upstream (in Fedora) directly, and minimize changes present within their fork.
Re: Spin spin spin (Score:1)
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Alive and well? Whatever is using that name is not CentOS.
https://slashdot.org/story/380... [slashdot.org]
RHEL/Fedora is too far behind? (Score:2, Insightful)
In the past, Fedora/RHEL is been so far behind that it's sort of worthless. Security problems were hard to fix because they weren't back ported to whatever ancient versions of the libraries were in the release. New stuff didn't work because libraries was years behind.
Did that all get fixed? At some point it must have, because AWS is going to use it.
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RHEL is not Fedora. Not sure why you're lumping them together like that. Two different distros, two different sets of use case scenarios.
Fedora itself is a fairly fast-paced distro, with each version lasting for about a year, and it's always been this way. Tends to be bleeding edge, more so than Ubuntu. If there's anything new and cutting edge, it will show up in Fedora before almost any other distro.
By contrast, RHEL is a long-lived, fully supported distribution. Major versions are set pretty much thro
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Fedora is the upstream testing distribution for RHEL. Every RHEL is now forked from a Fedora release. Were you under the impression that they are entirely distinct? They are not, the Fedora bugzilla and mailing lists are hosted by Red Hat.
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They are distinct projects. Yes every few years RH takes a Fedora version and bases the next RHEL on that. Most Fedora releases never make it into RHEL. But other than this basing, the relationship is very distant and hands off. RH hosts Fedora infrastructure, but the steering commitee and development is independent of RH and community-diven. Only about a third of Fedora developers are employed by RH. The direction Fedora takes (including the Gnome rubbish) is driven largely by the community, not by Re
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Can you point to any software or feature in RHEL which is not tested first in Fedora? Even one?
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I mean... Stratis stands out as an RHEL-first tech. It's available for Fedora, of course, but with Fedora focusing on btrfs and moving more spins to btrfs-by-default, it's *real* hard to portray Stratis as being tested in Fedora.
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Since I've not even heard of it before, and am aware of no one that uses it, I'd not say it "stands out" as anything. The name itself is even easily confused with a popular blockchain technology.
I appreciate your pointing it out. Would you say that nearly all of the rest of RHEL is first developed, and tested in Fedora?
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Would you say that nearly all of the rest of RHEL is first developed, and tested in Fedora?
No, and mostly because I think the idea of "testing" by human users to be antiquated. By far, most testing is automated, and it happens before release. The problem with interactive testing by humans is that it's really not a very high quality signal. Humans are bad at fully testing complex code paths, so lots of operations go untested if they're done by humans. And worse, humans are reluctant to do tests for the sake of testing. So if the purpose of a distribution is to test the software, you're going
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> No, and mostly because I think the idea of "testing" by human users to be antiquated. By far, most testing is automate
That seems quite orthogonal to the idea that software for RHEL is first developed, and tested, in Fedora. Whether automated testing occurs in Fedora or RHEL, and whether much of testing is done with automated tools, is quite distinct from the existince and precedence of testing environments.
Automated testing has its uses, but I'd not expect it to be effective in smoke testing a new GUI,
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So what? It's not much different than the relationship between Debian and Ubuntu. Ubuntu is based on Debian, but has no control over Debian's direction. They just use it as a base, and pull packages from it that they then take in their own direction. RHEL is to Fedora in the very same way. Would you say Debian is a beta for Ubuntu? I certainly wouldn't.
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The relation for Debian and Ubuntu isn't as linked as Red Hat and Fedora. Debian is not forked from Ubuntu the way RHEL is forked from Fedora. They increasingly overlap, and I'd be unsurprised if they do wind up linked that way in the future.
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Can you point to any software or feature in RHEL which is not tested first in Fedora? Even one?
Can you point to a square, even one, that was not also a rectangle?
Rectangles are just the test-bed for potential squares!
Re: RHEL/Fedora is too far behind? (Score:2)
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The Fedora FAQ on this is published at:
https://docs.fedoraproject.org... [fedoraproject.org]
Quoting from the Fedora FAQ:
Fedora is developed by the Fedora Project and sponsored by Red Hat. It follows its own release schedule, with a new version approximately every six months. Fedora provides a modern Linux operating system utilizing many of the latest technologies. It is free for all users and supported via the Fedora community.
To create Red
Re: RHEL/Fedora is too far behind? (Score:2)
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Can you name even one security patch that wasn't backported to RHEL and just left open?
I've heard this said a lot, but no one has ever had an actual example. I'm sure there's at least one.
I've run Ubuntu ever since it was supported (Score:2)
It's not a life-ending tragedy that AWS is sanctioning Fedora. If you don't like it just run Ubuntu or containerize your apps and run them on Lambda, ECS or EKS
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You can run Ubuntu on EC2 [amazon.com], or make your own EC2 disk image [amazon.com].
In practice, it's better to write your software in a way that doesn't depend on any particular distro.
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IMO: RHEL 6.5 and CentOS 6.5 were worthwhile distros. All downhill since then.
Does anybody like Gnome 40?
Rhel is now dead at the fed (Score:2)
AWS ?used to? offer rhel, with some deal on pre-activation baked into the cost so you didn't have to deal with rhel costs and activation complexity to spin up a quick image to test applications. This was especially valuable to federal contractors for product acceptance testing after centos matching rhel was removed, as the fed exclusively required rhel (at least for a decade). The fed also rarely migrated to rhel 8, leaving contractors stuck on centos 7/rhel 7 for acceptance testing. This all changed by the
Re: Rhel is now dead at the fed (Score:1)
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Rhel is still available on the marketplace and the subscription cost is baked in. Not sure if what you're saying is based on actual knowledge.
No, he's full of crap. Agencies still don't use Ubuntu because it's crap. Some have allowed Debian in for limited purposes. However, RHEL still rules. I wouldn't even consider something running on ubuntu unless there was no other way. Get a professional distro like RHEL.
What a stupid choice (Score:2)
Yeah, let's buck to global trend, RPM just has to be better, right? Right?
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RPM is just fine, Stupid.
What is it missing, in your view?
You either can't think of anything, you're cite something it has, or you'll cite something most sysadmins want it not to have.
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RPM is a huge steaming pile. The only thing worse is rpmbuild.
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Right, you have no reasons. You once had a fight with an RPM package, you lost, you cried, and so you talk shit.
What you don't have is a technical complain about the RPM format or system.
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Don't get out much, do you.
Amazon Linux originally depended on CentOS... (Score:2)