Amazon Linux Reviews

My main use case for Amazon Linux is to run my production environment in a robust, scalable operating system. I have a SaaS platform where we run all our servers in Amazon, and we use Amazon Linux as the operating system that serves all our servers to our customers.

Being a SaaS platform, we need to ensure the security of the platform that we are running, and Amazon Linux provides the latest and greatest patches with all the packages included, making it easier for us to manage. The best features Amazon Linux offers include a very good package management system where we can quickly install everything, and the packages are compatible and very performant with Graviton processors. Graviton is even cheaper, but we do not have much expertise on running things on Arm processors, so we rely on the operating system, which abstracts us from the Arm processor to the application. Amazon Linux helps us do that, and the performance is so high on these servers. They are fine-tuned in such a way that it can use the best out of the hardware. Amazon Linux has positively impacted our organization. We were running on normal servers which were expensive, and we moved to Graviton servers. If we had used any other operating system, there might have been many packaging issues with the modules that we are using, the classes, the objects, and other components. Amazon Linux comes with all the packages required to run on Graviton, which helped us reduce our cost. We were able to achieve almost 30% more improvement in performance on the servers and almost 10% reduction in cost.

Amazon Linux is currently available mostly in Amazon, but I would like to see it available outside as well. Amazon last provided some security patches that were not very fast, which was one reason I did not rate it higher, along with a few things, such as some particular versions of Python that are not readily available in Amazon Linux.

I have been using Amazon Linux for almost four years.

We have Amazon Linux servers which we have not restarted for almost three years, and the operating system is very robust. Once we received a security patch from Amazon through proactive updates, and we had to update it. Amazon Linux is stable.

Amazon Linux is highly scalable.

Previously, we were using CentOS, and we switched to Amazon Linux for better reliability and continuous support, as Amazon Linux was also a Fedora flavor.

I have seen a return on investment. As I mentioned earlier, we were able to increase the performance by at least 10 to 20% and also reduce the cost by up to 10%.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Amazon Linux is that it was decent, and in fact, it was good.

Before choosing Amazon Linux, I evaluated CentOS as an option.

My advice to others looking into using Amazon Linux is that if you are moving to Graviton servers, Amazon Linux would be the best option, as you will get almost all the packages right away in Amazon Linux. I give this review a rating of 10.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

I am working with Infosys, and the client is Denmark's Bank, Danske Bank, one of the largest banks in Denmark. I am part of a migration project with the bank servers moving from on-premises to AWS cloud. Amazon Linux was purchased from the Amazon Marketplace, and we have OpenShift, the Red Hat OpenShift container platform. As a migration engineer, I am not entirely certain how partnerships work with Amazon. My organization is large and its structure regarding how they manage their relation with AWS cloud is complex. We are using the service, with the OCP cluster purchased from the marketplace running on AWS and managed by Red Hat.

Regarding Amazon Linux, I observe that there is not much difference between Amazon Linux and Red Hat Linux. When I install packages, I notice that Red Hat Linux takes a little more time, and I am uncertain if it is based on the hardware or the security system. The RPM-based package makes it very difficult to install some specific packages in Red Hat Linux, but with Amazon Linux, it is easy to install RPM or DNF packages.

I have been using Amazon Linux for the last one and a half years.

Future features for Amazon Linux, like cost-effectiveness, should be improved because any organization, whether small, a startup company, or a large organization, primarily considers cost. Comparing to Ubuntu, an open-source alternative, I think Amazon Linux could benefit from some cost optimization because it costs a little more than Ubuntu in Indian Rupees.

Regarding maintenance for Amazon Linux, sometimes it requires maintenance similar to how Red Hat provides end-to-end support for Red Hat Linux.

Regarding Amazon Linux support, we used to raise tickets for any issues related to it. We connect on chat or interact with AWS engineers for critical issues. With the support system for Amazon Linux, I feel there is a lack compared to Red Hat, which provides a stronger support system.

I have overall experience of 6+ years, with six years, nine or ten months as of this January.

Regarding the stability of Amazon Linux, we are migrating thousands of servers from on-premises to AWS cloud for Danske Bank. I observed that while patching and updates from Red Hat systems are handled easily, with Amazon Linux we need to take extra care, particularly with legacy systems, since the latest versions work fine without issues.

In my experience with Amazon's technical support, all issues are resolved whenever I connect with their engineers, but the communication levels can be somewhat different, such as a priority system. I would give a score of 8.5 to 9 out of 10.

Positive

From an installation point of view for Amazon Linux, there is nothing difficult as we are using Terraform for deployment purposes. We use the Amazon provided AMI directly and deploy it, just as we do with other Linux flavors such as Ubuntu or Red Hat.

From my personal and system perspective, I have experienced over the last one year that any packages run easily in Amazon Linux, which I would recommend because I am a cloud engineer for AWS cloud for the last six plus years and I am aware of how these things are involved. For Amazon Linux overall, I give it nine out of ten because it executes commands very smoothly, and that is what I appreciate about it. I would rate this review nine out of ten.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

I currently use Amazon Linux for a web application deployed on AWS on EC2. The web application is built on Amazon EC2, which is the virtual machine infrastructure as a code service, and Amazon Linux is Amazon's Linux distribution built for increased efficiency with use on EC2. I have built my web application on EC2 instances in a managed instance group and Amazon Linux is the distribution that I use due to it being hosted on AWS.

I appreciate the fact that Amazon Linux is stripped of unnecessary components, which leads to faster boot times of the EC2 instances. When my web application has to scale, it can do that very quickly because the increased instances in the managed instance group can boot up quicker than if I were using a heavier distribution. The second thing I appreciate is that because it was built by Amazon, it contains pre-installed tooling that I would likely use for the web application or other Amazon applications that I might build. For example, the AWS CLI is already installed on it, along with a Sessions Management Agent and EBS storage drivers.

The combination of features definitely stands out for my day-to-day work. I appreciate the fact that the tooling is already integrated and pre-installed, as it reduces the toil of initial server setup. For a web application where you need that elasticity of instances, maybe scaling up and scaling down, this is really beneficial because they work together seamlessly. Because of the integrated tooling and because the unnecessary components are stripped away, you get faster boot up time and a more efficient service.

It has been positive because Amazon Linux increases the speed of delivery due to the fast boot up times and the integrated tooling. It also helps to be part of our cost reduction strategy as well because with EC2, you can scale the instances up and down. By using Amazon Linux, which is very quick, and EC2, which scales up and down, you can very quickly respond to increased demand of the web application.

In terms of improvements, the one thing I would say which I wish Amazon Linux was better at is that sometimes I find that I need to compile my own software because some dependencies are not within Amazon Linux. It is very lightweight, which is beneficial in some regards, but in other regards, if I have to use other tools with it, maybe different network drivers, I would have to compile that myself. If there were different versions of Amazon Linux based on how heavyweight or lightweight you want it to be, that could be quite good and would allow more flexibility and choice.

I would say the only other limitation, which is to be expected, is that Amazon Linux would lock you into using Amazon if you were to use that distribution, because it would be very difficult to port it on GCP, for example. You probably would not want to do that anyway, so you are locking yourself in, but you would have to accept that if you were to actually use this, which maybe you do not have an issue with, but maybe you would.

Because the package ecosystem of Amazon Linux is lighter than some more popular distributions like Ubuntu or Debian, there may be fewer third-party community packages which other users might want to use, but they might find that they are not able to. In my specific use case, I do not have to use too many third-party packages, so it is not much of a problem, but I would imagine that other users might see that as an issue.

I have been using Amazon Linux for around a year.

Amazon Linux is very stable and is continually maintained by Amazon.

Amazon Linux is highly scalable because it allows for EC2 instances to scale up and down based on what you want, so it is very beneficial.

The customer support for Amazon Linux is great. AWS offers different tiers of support based on how much your cloud spend is and how much you are willing to spend. At the top level, you will get responses from AWS within ten minutes or maybe five minutes, which is world-class service.

Positive

I previously used Ubuntu on EC2. The reason for switching is because, as this is an AWS-native distribution, I found that it was quite handy that the specific tools that I would want to use were already installed on it. Also, because Amazon Linux is maintained by AWS and they offer support for it as well, that was a factor that drew me to use it.

In terms of pricing, because you can scale your instances on how many you want, you have a lot of control over the pricing. With Amazon Linux itself, there is no cost associated with using it, so I would say it is very good from a pricing perspective.

I evaluated Ubuntu before choosing Amazon Linux.

In terms of time saved when instances are booting up, you could easily see ten to twenty percent time savings just because Amazon Linux is a lighter distribution, so it would be quicker for your instances to boot up. Using Amazon Linux, you could very easily see maybe a ten to twenty percent speed increase as opposed to using heavier Linux distributions.

I would recommend others to try Amazon Linux if they are going to run their applications on Amazon. If you are looking to run your applications on different clouds, you might want to prioritize a distribution which is more portable so you can more easily use it across different cloud platforms. I would rate Amazon Linux a nine out of ten.

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)

My main use case for Amazon Linux is deploying Java microservice applications, Python applications, and .NET applications. I chose Amazon Linux most of the time because my platform and infrastructure are hosted in Amazon, so the compatibility is fine with Amazon Linux while using Amazon.

I deploy applications on Amazon Linux by writing scripts in the user data script and deploying the web application from there.

Amazon Linux is deployed in my organization in a private cloud where we deploy everything.

The best features Amazon Linux offers include optimized performance and tight AWS integration. SELinux is enabled on Amazon Linux and performs automatic security patching and CVE fixes. Critical vulnerability fixes and those security features have helped me significantly. The integration with AWS CLI, Cloud-init, and services such as SSM Agent and CloudWatch agent has been useful.

Amazon Linux has positively impacted my organization primarily by providing cost savings, as we do not want to spend on the OS portion.

Amazon Linux can be improved by integrating other cloud features so that other cloud providers can also use Amazon Linux. GCP and Azure could benefit from Amazon Linux compatibility as well.

I have been using Amazon Linux for seven years.

I have saved approximately five percent.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing includes working on multiple other vendor licenses for the software licensing portion. The setup cost involves initial migration planning and related activities.

Amazon Linux cost is free to use, which provides significant cost optimization benefits that we always leverage. My advice to others looking into using Amazon Linux is to use it and save your cost. I would rate this product nine out of ten.

Private Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)