Amazon Linux Reviews

I switched to a different organization where I am using AWS. We are dealing with EKS and ECS. I work with API Gateways, Amazon Linux, Lambda functions, and S3 storage buckets, among other services. Currently, I am building my own product, which is deployed in AWS services using ECS.

ECS is an excellent service because it has auto-scaling and is easy to manage. Since those are Fargate services, the cost is also lower compared to other options.

AWS has a CloudFront service that functions as an API to deploy all the services, which is the main feature I use. Handling services with Terraform is also effective, and AWS provides an SDK to deploy and create infrastructure-level creations.

With respect to scalability, security, and reliability, these services help me significantly. The application we developed is now more stabilized with these services. In terms of service security, there are many constraint security protocols and policies that help me create our own networks, security groups, and inline policies.

I have not had exposure to migrations, such as from Azure to AWS or GCP to AWS.

A main concern is that security patches and versions are released continuously. For example, EKS versions increase with updates. Our applications are built on the latest versions, which affects upgrades. We need to make modifications at the system and application coding level, and some packages may become outdated. This is impacted by the need to maintain security, which is the standard they want to uphold.

Amazon stops support for older versions of EKS and other services. While they do provide some time for migration, they should provide at least basic support so that if a product does not need to migrate to new versions, that would be a better approach.

Overall, I have been using this for almost six years.

Before starting my organization and building my product, I worked as a developer with multi-cloud platforms including Azure, GCP, and AWS, because my organization was building a multi-cloud platform.

I am paying around $300 to $400 per month because I use many services.

Azure has more charges than GCP and AWS.

Azure and GCP each present different scenarios. We use Terraform because it is scalable and manageable across all clouds.

I believe AWS could introduce a no-cloud approach where, as a developer and customer, I would not need to see infrastructure creations or infrastructure management. The system should be self-healing adaptively, with auto-patches that apply security patches through AI if required. I am more interested in that direction because AI is expanding and the world is moving faster with AI technology.

In terms of pricing, compared to Azure, AWS is more reasonable because both follow a pay-as-you-go model. However, I feel Amazon follows minimal standards of pricing compared to GCP and Azure.

I rate this review a 9.5 overall.

My main use case for Amazon Linux is deploying Django websites, apps, and APIs with Next.js. I handle deployment using Nginx and manage the complete setup for deploying full projects.

A specific example is the Django API backend with a Next.js frontend for the web dashboard at 71lbs.com, where users must log in. The entire project is deployed on Amazon Linux. I manage the integration of new deployments and created a setup using Nginx and the supervisor provided by Amazon Linux.

Amazon Linux and Ubuntu are similar but differ in implementation and setup. Both have similar functions and run very well, making Amazon Linux a good option alongside Ubuntu.

These features work well for me, though I am more accustomed to working with Ubuntu. My company uses Amazon Linux because of the initial setup they established. It is working very well and operates very fast with queries and everything on that server, so there are no current problems.

Since using Amazon Linux, I have performed long queries and updated information for the web system. I find that it works very fast and handles large queries for substantial amounts of information effectively.

Amazon Linux could be improved by including libraries for supervisor. On Ubuntu, supervisor runs Django services in the background, while Amazon Linux does not have this built-in and requires a different supervisor approach. Documentation or PDF files about well-known solutions for this would be beneficial.

Since Amazon Linux is based on Ubuntu, documentation explaining the differences between Ubuntu and Amazon Linux would be valuable. When I am accustomed to working with Ubuntu and want to use the same functions on Amazon Linux, I would prefer to understand the differences and how to implement features that exist on Ubuntu so I do not become lost in the process or have to search extensively for information.

I have been using Amazon Linux for two years.

Amazon Linux is stable.

Amazon Linux has good scalability. I remember when we upgraded one server to a different tier, the service upgrade was quick and very effective.

Customer support for Amazon Linux is very good. We experienced an upgrade that took only a few minutes to complete.

Positive

I used a different solution with a VPS running Ubuntu before, primarily because I had that available and possessed more knowledge about using it, as well as due to cost considerations, since I was not aware of AWS at that time.

I am not certain whether my company purchased Amazon Linux through the AWS Marketplace, as the server is managed by the company, but I believe they are using it from the AWS Marketplace.

I have heard about pricing and consider it good. The setup was somewhat difficult because of a lack of knowledge. I am not certain about the cost and licensing because I was not involved in that part of the process.

I do not have information on whether I have seen a return on investment.

Before choosing Amazon Linux, I evaluated Google Cloud Platform. My company selected Amazon Linux because they have all their services already working on AWS.

My advice to others looking into using Amazon Linux would be to be conscious about the differences between Amazon Linux and Ubuntu, as they look similar and have similar properties, but they need to have more knowledge for the initial setup, especially for downloading packages and dependencies. I would recommend obtaining more information on that topic.

Before concluding, I would suggest that your platform could provide examples of pricing and examples of which companies work with AWS and which languages they use. Perhaps you could create a list of websites using Django and Next.js as well as those using JavaScript. When I have a new project, I could check if my project will fit on AWS and how the pricing will be structured, because whether I run microservices or a VPS or EC2 server, it would be helpful to know the pricing, features, and everything before purchasing and discovering everything after the project is developed and deployed, with no way to roll back. I give this product a rating of eight out of ten.

Private Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

I usually ran GoLang applications on Amazon Linux. These applications are compiled for any Linux flavor or architecture. I have worked with API backends for VoIP APIs in the CPaaS platforms.

Recently I got a use case where I needed to implement a noise cancellation application for Amazon Linux as a backend application. This noise canceller specifically used an Intel procedure which is specific to architecture. I faced some challenges with Amazon Linux in this scenario. I had to switch to Ubuntu for that specific use case.

If you are building something of your own in a language such as GoLang or Python, it is really easy to set it up and just hit the go button. You just need to build your application and you can have a binary which can run on Amazon Linux easily. However, for specific tasks such as the noise reduction case, I have to install a package for a specific instruction which I had never worked with before. That was a new experience. It is really easy to install on Amazon Linux from the package right away, which is a really good thing.

We are scaling up and scaling down in the EKS environments with Amazon Linux only. Amazon Linux really works well for this.

Amazon Linux is really easy to use. Almost all of the packages and all of the third-party applications are available for Amazon Linux. They are just one command away to install them.

For example, if I use any CentOS based system, Ubuntu based system, or Debian based system, I have to keep updating my repository. Sometimes it is really hard to find some Amazon specific packages for those distributions. However, for Amazon Linux, it is really good and really handy that all of the information and all of the packages are available on just a few commands away.

Regarding the update side, I really appreciate the kernel patches for Amazon Linux. They are released straightaway. Whenever something is fixed in the security domain, it gets released pretty soon compared to other distributions for Amazon Linux. In terms of customer compliance with GDPR and similar requirements, it is really good to have that.

I have noticed benefits in my workflow with Amazon Linux. When I used to have a Windows laptop and whenever I needed a Linux instance, I used to spin up one on EC2. This brought me a lot of helpful things without owning a machine. Even if I am in an environment where I have very low network bandwidth and I have to compile huge images or build a big image, perhaps something related to AI or training a model, it is really easy to just spin up an EC2 instance and build that image there. The network connectivity and all those aspects help in that way.

It is really easy to integrate Amazon Linux with the conventional tools available for all Linux systems.

Amazon Linux has performed really well under heavy workloads.

I feel there can be a lot of extensibility for Amazon Linux, the same way we have for Ubuntu or Debian. That might be a good use case to look forward to.

I would love to get my hands on Amazon Linux on a laptop, if that is possible. Nowadays the machines are really powerful and if you have an operating system like Ubuntu and you love working with Linux, people will easily switch to Amazon Linux because they are running the same thing on their laptops and even in the cloud. That would be really beneficial in that case.

I have been using Amazon Linux since 2020 and it has been five years now. I have been using Amazon Linux to run production applications on EC2 instances and running some POCs, creating test applications around it. I have used Amazon Linux as my secondary computer in the cloud for four years.

Amazon Linux is really good and stable.

It is easy to scale Amazon Linux. If you want scalability and many out of the box features, you can choose Amazon Linux right away.

I have not had any chance to reach out to customer support.

Negative

I have used a couple of Linux distributions before Amazon Linux. I have used Linux Mint, CentOS, Ubuntu, and Debian. I still use them for some software which is recommended for it, but not much.

Amazon Linux was readily available on the AWS cloud, so it was an easy switch and there were no major setup complications.

I did purchase Amazon Linux a couple of times through the AWS Marketplace. However, these things are majorly managed by the DevOps team.

I saved around 100 to 200 hours of build time when I used to have a slow laptop before I switched to Mac. That was really helpful. I can do other tasks while the build is going on, so it increased productivity as well.

In general, I have saved many hours in my workflow. We are not in the era of generative AI where you have to research, implement, and test everything. Because I used to have a Windows instance, Amazon Linux was my go-to for any of the tasks.

I mostly found Amazon Linux documentation and community support very easily. Nowadays I majorly use Gemini or ChatGPT for my issues, which is really helpful.

Most of the time Amazon Linux meets the need in the security areas with latest patches for everything.

It is mostly for public cloud, specifically public AWS. We use Amazon Linux across all the environments.

It is really good. As I work in an enterprise environment, most of the pricing and other details are handled by other teams, not the backend engineering team. I have never faced any such issues.

I would rate this product an 8 out of 10.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

With AWS, I work with products involving networking, migration, and other services. Currently, I work in an industry where I use Amazon Linux for various use cases.

I find Amazon Linux valuable for its direct functionality. The best features include the core capabilities that make it suitable for our operations.

Amazon Linux could be improved by including additional features and continuous improvements in various areas.

I have several years of experience with Amazon Linux.

With the optimized kernel, there are certain benefits and limitations to consider. The support quality has been a factor in my experience with the service.

Regarding the optimized kernel, I can explain that it offers specific advantages and constraints depending on the use case.

Positive

I have experience with Palo Alto and have mentioned it previously. I also have experience with AWS services and can discuss how they have been helpful. I have some familiarity with AWS CodeStar and other AWS tools. I do have experience with Amazon Linux and AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery. We are customers of AWS rather than partners. We use AWS services to solve our customer problems. To my knowledge, we are not partners who make products out of AWS services or sell through AWS, though I am still new to this role and may not know all the details. My review rating for Amazon Linux is between one to ten.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

I have experience with the product. AWS Lambda functions and the S3 bucket are the Amazon products I deal with mostly.

I am generally satisfied with Amazon Linux; I appreciate the EC2 instances as well.

The ecosystem of software packages in Amazon Linux has helped us keep up to date with the artificial intelligence trend, where people are using ChatGPT to code, and they are also using Amazon Developer Q to program applications much faster, and then also to meet requirements with the Google Play Store and Apple Store.

The rich documentation of Amazon Linux is beneficial for my migration processes; it is very helpful.

Amazon Linux's security updates have been helpful in general because I have had to be more specific in using the Identity Access Management (IAM) service so that we can have role-based permissions in preference to just keeping it open.

Amazon Linux can be improved by having the documentation contain more examples of use cases.

I have been working with Amazon Linux for at least five years.

The initial setup was very friendly for me; it was very friendly on Mac. I did not have any severe challenges installing or updating.

I do not use the optimized kernel in Amazon Linux.

I tried a little bit with Alexa services, but considering, it has been a while since I updated the integrated AWS CLI feature in Amazon Linux.

I find the pricing friendly because it is per hour; I use the pay-as-you-go option so that if the application does not have a lot of users, it is cheap. However, when there are many users, the users then pay for the expenses of the application.

There is a need for features including integration with other marketplaces; when you build, launch once, and deploy everywhere, it would be easy to just deploy once if there was that integration. That would be a nice feature to have.

I would recommend Amazon Linux to others. I give this review a rating of 7.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

My main use case for Amazon Linux is mostly deploying servers using NGINX and application runner, and I use it as a base image in Amazon Linux itself when I write any Docker file.

In my current project, investment.in, I use Amazon Linux as a web server as well.

The best features Amazon Linux offers, in my opinion, are the yum command and the packages that are already included, along with other packages that I can easily install in the Linux environment.

These features help me in my daily work by making automation very easy.

Amazon Linux has positively impacted my organization by increasing productivity since automation is easy and fast, allowing me to set up servers easily, thus productivity increases and efficiency improves as soon as possible while deploying my application using Amazon Linux.

For the improvement of Amazon Linux, I think there should be UI features in the future, as Amazon Linux currently has only terminal capabilities without a UI, and I hope to see documentation updates as soon as possible so when documentation expires, I am updating it and referring to it soon.

When using Amazon Linux, I would prefer if any command goes wrong that an auto-command feature would appear there.

I chose eight out of ten because command line improvement is needed along with UI features, and the second thing is that you can use auto-command line features.

I do not think there are any other improvements Amazon Linux needs right now, maybe something related to security, performance, or compatibility.

My advice for others looking into using Amazon Linux is to make sure the command line is easy and that Amazon Linux has more performance than other Linux environments and is more secure than other Linux environments as well.

I have been using Amazon Linux for more than five years, because I started using Amazon Linux in college.

I have more to add about how I use Amazon Linux; using the command, using shell machines, and using the terminals in Amazon Linux could be a great experience.

I would like to add that Amazon Linux is easy to use with the command line and also user-friendly, with no need to download any third-party updates like RPM packages and then install; I just use the command line only to download directly and install directly.

I purchased Amazon Linux through the AWS Marketplace.

I think next time with Amazon Linux, whenever a bad command is returned, it could be auto-generated to create the perfect command, and that is something you can implement.

I give this product a rating of eight out of ten.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

My main use case for Amazon Linux is as a base for my EC2 instances, but recently I have been using it almost exclusively as EKS node stock images.

A specific example of how I am using Amazon Linux in one of my projects is that it hosts our Kubernetes nodes that connect to AWS EKS services.

The best feature Amazon Linux offers, in my opinion, is the compatibility with AWS cloud and AWS services.

When I mention compatibility with AWS cloud and services, I appreciate how it is connected to AWS System Manager and how it automates registration to EKS.

Amazon Linux has impacted my organization positively by simplifying the workflow where we manage our EKS nodes. It simplifies our workflow because it reduces time; we always know that Amazon Linux AMIs are updated with all security patches and compatible with EKS, so we are able to rely on them.

I am not sure how Amazon Linux can be improved, as we are fully satisfied with it, but sometimes we cannot find some modern application packages. I cannot provide examples right now, but I think previously I tried to install a PostgreSQL server into it and I was unable to find the latest version available from the package registry, so I had to compile it myself.

I do not remember exactly how long I have been using Amazon Linux, but probably starting in 2018.

Amazon Linux is stable in my experience; there were no issues at all with stability.

The scalability of Amazon Linux for my needs is good; it is the same as any Linux distribution.

We previously used Ubuntu and kops to deploy Kubernetes clusters, but we switched when Amazon provided the EKS service and AMIs with Amazon Linux that connects to EKS.

Before choosing Amazon Linux, we worked on Ubuntu.

Amazon Linux is free, so we are not purchasing Amazon Linux, but we use AMIs that are published on the Marketplace.

I do not have experience with the pricing of Amazon Linux.

My advice to others looking into using Amazon Linux is to use it if you need it.

I would not add more about the needed improvements, perhaps around package availability or anything else that comes to mind.

My overall review rating for Amazon Linux is 7.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

The use cases for this in our company is that we have a customer that internally uses it for several applications, and they are a telecommunications company that has virtual machines and Linux machines for several purposes.

In my opinion, the best features of Amazon Linux include the stability and its standard Linux distribution, which in some cases is easier to deploy and manage than the Ubuntu distribution, but I feel comfortable with Ubuntu too.

The rich documentation with Amazon Linux is beneficial for my migration processes; I think that one of the strongest parts is the documentation. AWS has a lot of documents and official documentation, which is pretty good in most cases, even though in some instances, you have to use the documentation for third parties.

It helps with workflow by being pretty useful for automation tasks.

Right now, I don't think there are any specific areas to improve in Amazon Linux.

I say it's stable because I'm a pretty big fan of the Linux platform in general, so for me, it is the most stable distribution and the most stable operating system, especially since I know that they use the latest kernel.

I say it is also scalable because when AWS starts a project that works with something, they do things in a very good manner; AWS is a very stable distribution.

I rate the support or customer service of Amazon as very good because our customer has a support contract, so they pay a lot of money for access; my team can reach AWS engineers 24/7. It's really good support.

I haven't used a lot of support in the case specifically for Amazon Linux, but the few times I have to request support for that platform, the engineers have been very proficient and they have a lot of knowledge in the platform.

For me, the initial setup is complex, but I don't have sufficient elements to emit a concept in that part.

I use AWS, Azure, and I'm starting to use GCP, Google Cloud Platform.

I have also used ZoomInfo. I have been using the product since its creation. I have not used the ZoomInfo product.

With Amazon, I use AWS in infrastructure, EC2, S3, RDS, etcetera. Mostly infrastructure products, and in Azure, I use virtual machines, VNETs, and SQL Azure, etcetera.

I have used Amazon Linux machines, but in some cases, I deliver Ubuntu servers, but I have used Amazon Linux machines as well.

I use that feature in Amazon Linux, absolutely.

I don't remember if I use the optimized kernel in Amazon Linux because I have used the Linux functions and the Linux functionality per se, but I'm not used to that functionality in AWS.

I don't have so much experience regarding the pricing and licensing of Amazon Linux.

We are partners with Amazon, we are registered partners, and we have several people certified in AWS, but we need to get much more business and pay the subscription to go to the next step in our level of partnership.

I rate this review with an overall rating of 10.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)