AWS recently announced the release of Amazon Linux 2023, the third generation of AWS’s Linux operating systems. According to the company, this release is geared at offering users enhanced security, optimization for the cloud, and long-term AWS support.
With this release, users gain heightened security standards with new preconfigured securities policies that simplify the process of implementing common industry guidelines. These policies can be configured either at launch time or run time.
Amazon Linux 2023 is also intended to make it easier for users to plan and manage the life cycle of their operating systems, with a new major version released every two years. Throughout those two years, each major release will also receive an update every three months, including security updates, bug fixes, and new features.
AWS also stated that each major version will come with five years of long-term support. This is made up of the initial two years as well as a three-year maintenance period.
Lastly, Amazon Linux brings users deterministic updates through versioned repositories. The distribution locks to a specific version of the Amazon Linux package repository, providing users with improved control over how and when updates are implemented.
With this, a “dnf update” command won’t update installed packages automatically, offering users more control over their updates.
“Deterministic updates also promote usage of immutable infrastructure, where no infrastructure is updated after deployment,” the team at AWS wrote in a blog post. “When an update is required, you update your infrastructure as code scripts and redeploy a new infrastructure. Of course, if you really want to update your distribution in place, you can point dnf to an updated package repository and update your machine as you do today.”
To get started with Amazon Linux 2023, use the EC2 run-instances API, the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), or the AWS Management Console, and one of the four Amazon Linux 2023 AMIs provided by the company.
To learn more, read the blog post.