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Amazon Linux 2025 has been officially canceled

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(Some people didn’t take note of that, so let’s make it clear)

Already in 2024(!) AWS re:Invent had news on that topic that did not get much attention: There will be NO AL2025! *

AWS cited customer feedback requesting more stability and longer support cycles rather than frequent major version changes. Many organizations found the biannual major releases challenging for “enterprise deployment cycles”. โ€“ maybe 20th century organizations? ๐Ÿ˜„

Therefore:

Instead of Amazon Linux 2025, AWS will focus on AL2023 Enhancement:

  1. Continue quarterly minor updates to AL2023 with newer kernel versions and package updates
  2. Additional package requests from the community, with ~200 packages already added (see Requeats in Github Issues)
  3. Provide enhanced features within the existing AL2023 framework

Next Release

AWS has implemented a policy requiring 12 to 18 months advance notice before launching any new major Amazon Linux version.

Please stop making jokes about Debian now ๐Ÿ˜†

OpenSSL/QUIC

Amazon Linux will be stuck on OpenSSL 3 until EOL. BUT (!) AWS have implemented QUIC on “frontend”-services alreqdy ans maintain their own Rust-based implemtation s2n-{quic,tls}

Distro Alternatives

(Q) Is there a chance Amazon Linux 2023+ could become a RHEL rebuild?

(A) Likely, NOT …

  1. Amazon Linux targets AWS-optimized workloads with deep AWS service integration
  2. AlmaLinux serves as a RHEL-compatible alternative for organizations migrating from CentOS

(Q) AmazonLinux deeply integrates with what?

AWS bakes in some tweaks into kernel already instead of using tuned (which is used by RedHat for their RHEL AWS distro). AWS being first hand for drivers (ENI, FS) and being an upstream-party also plays a role.

AWS Kernel has kernel live patching free of charge โ€“ a major contribution to security ;)

Kernel patches? Let’s not hide patches under press release texts: some of AWS commits have already been mainlined, but as for 6.12.11 AL2023 and 5.15 Al2 they have following Kernel patches:

๐Ÿ‘‰ Thus, it absolutely makes sense to use an AWS kernel since most of those patches won’t be backported by Alma & Co. and AWS provides latest Kernels to Amazon Linux especially when running in newer hardware platforms

(Q) Do Alma Linux Bakery Images have EC2 support?

Alma Linux Cloud Images which don’t have a special AWS versions (only azure, gencloud, vagrant, ociโ€“ but Azure only comes with QEMU guest agent and SSH root login enabled).

AWS opened most packages to other distros as well, so it’s possible to install some packages to non-Amazon Linux distros as well including some restrictions (e.g Lustre).

Kernels could be upgraded using mainline builds from ELRepo or other Distros (here be dragons!)

To answer the question: EC2 support is given only as far to the point when Alma LTS was released or when service releases do come with back-ported features (which usually doesn’t happen). New features or up-to-date EC2 support probably won’t come in.