AWS commits to update its own Linux every other year

Amazon Web Services has announced that it will release an updated version of its own Linux every two years, starting with Amazon Linux 2022, which it is previewing now. The cloud colossus launched its first Linux distro in 2010, and seven … years … later … delivered a successor. In the name of speeding things up a bit, Jeff …

[Anonymous Coward]

Where can I get it?

> Amazon's pitch for the new release cycle is stability and predictability – which is just what the likes of Microsoft, Red Hat, Canonical, and SUSE have offered for years.

As an end user I wish I knew where I could get stability and predictability out of Windows10. They keep buggering about with it and breaking stuff. You always have to play guess what they broken now when you get an update. One of my laptops decided that after an update last week that I can no longer click on Start (or the windows key) and type the name of the program I want. Fortunately, only one seems to have done this. So I'd really love to know where I can get a bit of the stability and predictability thing you talk about.

Maybe enterprise customers get it. RHEL & Debian offer it, SUSE seems to be happy to change SW version in minor point releases with abandon, but at least they rarely seem to break it. Happy to accept that RHEL should be compared with what ever it is that MS offer the enterprise customer, but for home users there are CentOS/Alma/Rocky for those wanting the stability and predictability and of course Debian don't differentiate between different types of users.

[amacater]

Hmmm

No extras by default: no security updates applied by default. This is sub-Red Hat, supported for two years and vaguely maintained for five. Not good enough.

https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2021/11/preview-amazon-linux-2022/

[rcxb1]

<blockquote>But AWS also offers "no license costs,"</blockquote>

Oh? Where can I download a DVD ISO? Nowhere?

That's not quite the wording they use here:

"Amazon Linux 2022 is provided at no additional charge."

https://aws.amazon.com/linux/amazon-linux-2022

So you get Amazon Linux for free, so long as you keep paying your AWS bills, which is nothing unique at all... That's the kind of thing you get with Windows on Azure.

At least Oracle makes their version of Linux freely available to everyone, not just containerized in their own cloud.

[fg_swe]

Interesting Hardware: ARM

https://aws.amazon.com/de/ec2/graviton/

Tried them, work nicely.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not seeing the appeal. In fact, for me, a Red Hat lineage is a negative. I started out with Red Hat 5 in the '90s. It was kind of a pain, and subsequent toe-dipping into their latest offerings haven't been much more pleasant. I just don't find it a very friendly or well thought out approach to distros.

It is all personal choice, of course, but I'm a fan of Debian-derived distros, and spent a few years on raw Debian stable with custom-built add-ons for about 3 years just for shits and giggles. I wasn't working at the time so I could run whatever I wanted, and I wanted to see what the "bare bones" Ubuntu was built on would be like. I was also in a fanatic open-source frame of mind at the time, feeling burnt out by the industry and the political nature of the human beast, and had given away a useless piece of obsolete software I was obsessed with for nothing.

Had I spent the time on that obsessive project on contributing to viable open source projects, I dare say I'd have found work in no time just through word of mouth, disability or no. It took a worldwide disease to open the doors of remote work that I needed instead, and I must admit, I feel guilty for being glad of the opportunity it presented me.

[JamesTGrant]

No need to feel guilty

Trying to make the best of a situation in which you are placed (and through no fault of yours!) is honourable and commendable. To do so whilst having compassion on those who are suffering isn’t something about which (in my opinion!) one should feel guilty.

There *is* plenty to feel guilty about (are you helping the poor, the oppressed, the voiceless, etc etc) however, your hardworking and ability to adapt to changing conditions is something that (in my opinion) should be a source of ‘humble pride’.

Well done and good luck to you!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: No need to feel guilty

Well, thank you for that. Thank you very much.