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Amazon Linux 2 could be a viable alternative. In addition to being available to run on AWS, it's also available as a container image and in various machine imag
by jcrites 6y ago
Amazon Linux 2 could be a viable alternative. In addition to being available to run on AWS, it's also available as a container image and in various machine image formats:
https://aws.amazon.com/amazon-linux-2/#Resources https://aws.amazon.com/amazon-linux-2/#Resources
AL has had enough work put into it over the years that, while it may have been inspired by CentOS/RHEL originally, calling it a rebadged CentOS is not accurate these days. A full and competent team maintains it. While it's clearly made similar architectural choices, those are also for compatibility reasons.
However I doubt that support is available for anyone not running it on AWS, at least not from AWS -- but then again folks running CentOS weren't paying for support from RHEL either.
I also wonder if the announcement is as bad as people make it sound. I'm not an expert in Linux distros, but my understanding is that AL2 also uses a streams-like model, in that it provides long term support (patches for existing software) while also making new software available. My understanding was that, while it is inevitably versioned by making artifacts like VMs and containers available over CDNs ( https://cdn.amazonlinux.com/os-images/2.0.20201111.0/ https://cdn.amazonlinux.com/os-images/2.0.20201111.0/ ), the expectation is that most users will always launch the latest version, relying on its backward compatibility. Perhaps someone who knows more about the specifics of its release model could comment.
- symlinkk 6y agoI’d like to use Amazon Linux but it doesn’t seem like they provide ISOs. Seems like it’s intended to be used largely on EC2.
- notabee 6y agoWe had some folks try installing Amazon Linux images in our network. They spammed the network looking for a nonexistent link local metadata service, which is how we found out about them.
- mastre_ 6y agoDon't forget that AL also runs on Amazon's A1 ARM instances.
- JetSpiegel 6y agoThere's a CentOS ARM variant, I believe it's semi-official. Works ok on a RPi.
- fomine3 6y agoI tried to find official information about Amazon Linux but I can't find. Is it based on what distro? (maybe RHEL7 but not mentioned) How it's compatible to EPEL and other software for RHEL even though they are different from RHEL? (at least they uses different glibc version) I'm really curious whether Amazon Linux is accepted by Linux guru or not. It seems that there are very little docs for a distribution.