Amazon's AWS Releases Fedora-Based, Cloud-Optimized 'Amazon Linux 2023'

"AWS has provided you with a cloud-optimized Linux distribution since 2010," notes the cloud service's blog. This week they announced the third generation of Amazon's Linux distro: 'Amazon Linux 2023'. Every generation of Amazon Linux distribution is secured, optimized for the cloud, and receives long-term AWS support.... Deploying your workloads on Amazon Linux 2023 gives you three major benefits: a high-security standard, a predictable lifecycle, and a consistent update experience.

Let's look at security first. Amazon Linux 2023 includes preconfigured security policies that make it easy for you to implement common industry guidelines. You can configure these policies at launch time or run time. For example, you can configure the system crypto policy to enforce system-wide usage of a specific set of cipher suites, TLS versions, or acceptable parameters in certificates and key exchanges. Also, the Linux kernel has many hardening features enabled by default....

When looking for a base to serve as a starting point for Amazon Linux 2023, Fedora was the best choice. We found that Fedora's core tenets (Freedom, Friends, Features, First) resonate well with our vision for Amazon Linux. However, Amazon Linux focuses on a long-term, stable OS for the cloud, which is a notably different release cycle and lifecycle than Fedora. Amazon Linux 2023 provides updated versions of open-source software, a larger variety of packages, and frequent releases.

Amazon Linux 2023 isn't directly comparable to any specific Fedora release. The Amazon Linux 2023 GA version includes components from Fedora 34, 35, and 36. Some of the components are the same as the components in Fedora, and some are modified. Other components more closely resemble the components in CentOS Stream 9 or were developed independently. The Amazon Linux kernel, on its side, is sourced from the long-term support options that are on kernel.org, chosen independently from the kernel provided by Fedora.

Like every good citizen in the open-source community, we give back and contribute our changes to upstream distributions and sources for the benefit of the entire community. Amazon Linux 2023 itself is open source.
Their announcement notes that Amazon Linux is the most used Linux distribution on AWS, with hundreds of thousands of their customers already using Amazon Linux 2.

No thanks!

[FudRucker]

I am sticking with trusty olâ(TM) Slackware

Re:

[lsllll]

Glad we still have our options. I'll continue to use Debian with easy, seamless upgrades.

Congratulations on the release, AWS!

[MSG]

I think it's fantastic that Amazon has chosen to base their cloud optimized OS on Fedora. As the foundation of one of the most successful Enterprise operating systems available today, Fedora seems like a natural choice for other LTS software distributions.

At the same time, Amazon Linux is an LTS with a two year release cadence and a five year life cycle. The biggest difference between that and CentOS Stream is the cadence (where Stream's cadence is 3 years.) I wonder if bringing in new major features slightly more frequently will prove to be worth the effort of maintaining an entire distribution, or if Amazon will eventually choose to shift to a schedule that allows them to base Amazon Linux on CentOS Stream instead... Especially since building a system on CentOS Stream would provide the added benefit of binary compatibility with RHEL.

Re:

[theshowmecanuck]

I hope it doesn't force flatpak on people.

Re:

[MSG]

It can't. Flatpak is tightly coupled with user sessions. It only supports desktop applications.

For anything not desktop applications, you'd use containers.

Re:

[bill_mcgonigle]

> As the foundation of one of the most successful Enterprise operating systems available today

Oddly enough, many applications are available as .deb but not as .rpm.

Re:

[lsllll]

Fedora lost me a few years ago when they just couldn't offer a seamless upgrade option for their every 6 months release schedule. Switched to Debian and never looked back, but I do get my "Fedora" exercise at my clients who use RHEL.

Re:

[MSG]

Sorry to hear that. I've never had a problem upgrading Fedora releases from one to the next, personally.

No thanks

[Big Hairy Gorilla]

IBM Redhat definitely the worst choice. Broken straight out of the box. Maybe you need to pay for support? Optimized for who? Probably not you.

Gorillas don't like software dependency, prefer to bang rocks together, and just build your own.

Re:Broken OOTB?

[RotateLeftByte]

Please explain what is broken. If you are talking about Fedora then it is by design a bleeding edge distro and yes things do get broken.
If you are talking about RHEL then there are lots of us who would love to know what is broken OOTB and with what version that applies too.
I do hope that your complaint applies to current versions of RH software.

Re:

[Big Hairy Gorilla]

Perhaps provocatively worded, but the jist remains. Also before I defend myself, I'll admit this relates to one (extended) bad experience with RH. I had to do a QRadar installation a few years back and ... it's the most convoluted system I have ever had to work on... there's a custom kernel and I can't remember how many unique services you install... Installation was rough. Very effing rough. I worked on IBM time sharing systems way back at the beginning, this was just like that. Painful. Convoluted. Incomp

mmmkay then

[boulat]

Literally No One:
Amazon: Introducing Amazon Essentials Linux!

Re: mmmkay then

[Grokew]

Haha

Downloadable image?

[kriston]

AL2 had a downloadable image we could use either cloud-init or loopback mount to configure for our own VirtualBox/Hyper-V/VMware/KVM on-premises clusters.

Has anyone found the downloadable image for AL2023?