Whether you are looking for an operating system to host your general-purpose workloads or a purpose-built operating system to host containers, AWS offers you a portfolio of security-focused, stable, and high performance Linux-based operating systems.
Amazon Linux 2023 (AL2023) is the next generation of Amazon Linux, ideal for general purpose workloads on AWS. AL2023 will be supported for five years after it is generally available. AL2023 locks to a specific version of the Amazon Linux package repository, giving you control over how and when you absorb updates. AL2023 also provides the ability to get frequent updates and comes with features to help you meet your compliance needs.
Amazon Linux 2 (AL2) is the current Amazon Linux release that is Generally Available. AL2 supports the latest Amazon EC2 instance capabilities and is tuned for optimal performance on AWS. It comes with kernel live patching functionality to enable you to patch security vulnerabilities without rebooting your instance. AL2 is currently supported by over sixty five partners and is also offered as a virtual machine and container image for on-premises development and testing.
Bottlerocket is a minimal Linux-based operating system purpose built to host container workloads. It is designed to be secure and includes only the essential software needed to run containers. Bottlerocket makes it easy to keep your nodes up-to-date using container orchestrators like EKS or ECS, lowering management overhead. Bottlerocket is open-source and follows an open development model. Bottlerocket AMIs for EC2 instances are fully supported by AWS.