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.
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.
We run EC2 instances on Amazon Linux, and we use Amazon Linux-based Docker images as well, which serve as a container for our data science users. On top of Amazon Linux, we have installed all data science-supported software that they use, including Jupyter Notebook and R.
We also run APIs on top of Amazon Linux. We run Fargate containers which are again based on Amazon Linux. We run FastAPI, and then we host our APIs on top of it, allowing our UIs to connect to this API in the backend.
There are multiple use cases for Amazon Linux. The first thing is installing R and R packages. It is not easy because for R to be installed, you need to solve many dependencies. Most of those dependencies are already available in Amazon Linux. Our organization also does a lot of security settings, given that it is a banking domain, and all those settings are straightforward. There is nothing we cannot do on Amazon Linux. It is easily customizable, and there are many packages available that can be installed on it. The very good thing is the AWS support we get; if there are any issues, we can reach out to the support team, and they will troubleshoot and help us, through which we learn and can resolve issues ourselves next time.
It is all about patching for security settings on Amazon Linux. When there is a vulnerability at a given patch level, the patches are readily available, and we can install them on top of what we already have. Regarding the Docker settings, there was a vulnerability recently for which there are already configuration files that we can change to secure it.
Amazon Linux has definitely reduced our costs. If we wanted to run Red Hat, which is very similar to Amazon Linux, we would have to pay more. A lot of products supported on Red Hat are also supported on Amazon Linux, which has been great for us since we were running things on Red Hat in the past both in an on-premise environment and when we migrated to AWS. After Amazon Linux was available, we started using it, and everything is working fine. With respect to efficiency, performance is good; we have not found any performance issues that hinder or impact our applications. Additionally, it gets supported very well on all available AWS services, such as EC2 instances and Fargate, which is very compatible. Given that we are in banking, security is vital for us, and whenever there is a vulnerability, we immediately see patches available to remediate it, which works great for us.
Things are working fine overall; there is not anything I could advise as an improvement for Amazon Linux.
If we had to do customization for RStudio, that would be good. Many data science users from other companies might be using RStudio and R, so if there were an AMI out there that had all these packages and products installed by default, that would be beneficial. However, I am not sure how that would work since we pay for RStudio licensing, and I do not know if that could come by default in Amazon Linux.
I choose nine out of ten because it could use a bit more options. For example, an Amazon Linux Docker image that is pre-built with Jupyter Notebook or RStudio would mean less work for us as customers, enabling us to download and get it installed and running as soon as possible.
I have been using Amazon Linux since 2019.
We evaluated Amazon Linux, and it is very stable. We have been running it since 2019 without complaints.
The scalability of Amazon Linux is very good; we run it on top of scalable EC2 instances, and we do not find any issues there.
Customer support for Amazon Linux is excellent. When we reach out to customer support for any issues, they resolve them promptly. If there is a case pending for a long time, we at least receive an update from support so we know how to proceed.
Positive
We were using Red Hat and CentOS, which was open-source. We switched from Red Hat to CentOS because CentOS was more cost-efficient than Red Hat, but after switching to CentOS, we lacked support; patch availability was slow, and we did not have help with any issues. We switched from CentOS to Amazon Linux, and we got a lot of support, and the patch availability is fast.
The product itself is very good; even if I switch organizations and they are not using Amazon Linux, I will share my experience that Amazon Linux has worked great for us in these use cases. I do not see any issues with the product; it is all good. I rate this product nine out of ten.
My primary use case for Amazon Linux is hosting production-grade applications and microservices running on EC2, EKS, and container-based architectures such as Docker and Kubernetes. Amazon Linux provides continuous security and maintenance updates, including rapid vulnerability patches, which helps keep workloads secure with minimal manual effort. Its security hardening features and minimal footprint reduce the attack surface, offering better protection against common threats.
In my previous organization, almost all our servers ran on Amazon Linux, and I worked with it extensively for about five years. In my current role, we continue to use Amazon Linux primarily for cloud migration projects and for running microservices that require a lightweight, AWS-optimized Linux environment.
In my current role at Quantum Integrators, I am involved in migrating SAP workloads and other applications from a private cloud to AWS, and Amazon Linux has been a core part of this process due to its consistent performance, seamless integration with AWS services, and minimal configuration effort during migration.
Amazon Linux has positively impacted our organization by improving security, reducing operational overhead, and providing a stable, AWS-optimized platform for running production workloads. Its continuous security and maintenance updates, along with features like automated patching and a minimal footprint, help us keep our systems protected without requiring heavy manual effort. This has significantly reduced downtime and strengthened our overall security posture.
Because Amazon Linux is designed specifically for EC2, we’ve seen noticeable performance improvements—faster boot times, better networking throughput, and strong compatibility with AWS services like CloudWatch, SSM, and ECR. This has made application deployments smoother and more reliable.
For teams running microservices and containerized applications, Amazon Linux has provided a lightweight, consistent, and high-performance environment for EKS, ECS, Docker, and Kubernetes workloads. Its predictable update cycle and long-term support have also helped reduce version drift and operational complexity across multiple environments.
Overall, Amazon Linux has simplified server management, improved security compliance, lowered maintenance effort, and delivered reliable performance for cloud-native and production workloads.
One of the best features of Amazon Linux is that it is built and optimized specifically for AWS. Since it is an AWS-native operating system, it receives continuous security and maintenance updates directly from Amazon, including rapid vulnerability patches. In Amazon Linux 2023, kernel live patching is also available, which allows critical security updates to be applied without rebooting — a major advantage for production and low-latency applications.
Because Amazon Linux is tuned for EC2 and AWS hardware, we see better performance in terms of networking throughput, boot speed, and I/O, thanks to optimizations for Nitro, ENA networking, and NVMe-backed storage. It is lightweight, secure by default, and has a minimal attack surface, which reduces overall risk and operational overhead.
Another strong feature is its long-term support model. Amazon Linux provides a stable and predictable release cycle, with Amazon Linux 2 offering long-term support and Amazon Linux 2023 offering a 5-year lifecycle per release. This stability is valuable in production environments where consistency and predictable updates matter.
The OS also comes with essential AWS tools preinstalled — such as the AWS CLI, SSM Agent, EC2 Instance Connect, CloudInit, and ENA drivers — which eliminates additional setup and ensures seamless integration with AWS services. It fully supports container and microservices workloads, including Docker, Kubernetes tooling, ECS, and EKS, making it suitable for cloud-native applications.
Although Amazon Linux is primarily CLI-based (as it’s designed as a lightweight server OS), it is extremely efficient for automation-driven environments. The kernel and system parameters can be further optimized for high-performance compute workloads, databases, and web applications by tuning networking settings, file limits, enhanced networking, and memory configurations.
Overall, Amazon Linux delivers a secure, high-performance, and cost-effective environment for AWS workloads. Its native integration, automatic patching, predictable lifecycle, and optimized kernel are the main reasons we prefer it for production servers and large-scale cloud deployments.
AWS provides meaningful cost savings for Amazon Linux workloads through long-term commitment options like Savings Plans and Reserved Instances. Compute Savings Plans offer the most flexibility across EC2, Fargate, and Lambda, while EC2 Instance Savings Plans deliver the best pricing for specific instance families. Standard and Convertible Reserved Instances also help reduce costs based on 1–3 year commitments. These options have helped us optimize our overall compute expenses effectively when running Amazon Linux on EC2.
One improvement for Amazon Linux would be stronger support for running it outside AWS. Although Amazon provides local VM images for VirtualBox and VMware, they are intended mainly for development and testing. Unlike Ubuntu, Debian, or Red Hat, Amazon Linux is not designed or fully supported as a production OS in on-prem or hybrid environments. Expanding official support outside AWS would offer more flexibility for teams that maintain mixed infrastructure.
Another area for improvement is the community ecosystem. Compared to Ubuntu or Red Hat, Amazon Linux has a smaller community and fewer third-party resources or tutorials. A larger ecosystem would make troubleshooting and adoption easier.
Finally, improving backward compatibility between Amazon Linux 2 and Amazon Linux 2023—especially around package management (DNF vs yum) and updated toolchains—would simplify upgrades for teams managing large fleets.
I have been using Amazon Linux for approximately 6.5 plus years.
Yes, Amazon Linux is stable. In my experience, the operating system itself has been reliable and consistent across production environments. Even during situations where an AWS Availability Zone faced issues—such as the recent DNS-related outage in one of the US-East-2 Availability Zones—Amazon Linux continued to function normally. The temporary impact was related to the AWS infrastructure, not the OS.
Because my applications run in a high-availability (HA) architecture across multiple Availability Zones, traffic automatically failed over to the healthy zone without downtime. Amazon Linux handled the transition smoothly, which reinforced my confidence in its stability for production workloads. Overall, it has remained secure, stable, and dependable in day-to-day operations.
Amazon Linux is highly scalable because it runs on AWS infrastructure, which allows instances to scale up or down quickly based on workload demand. The OS itself is lightweight and optimized for EC2, so it starts faster and performs consistently during scaling events. When paired with AWS Auto Scaling groups or container platforms like EKS and ECS, Amazon Linux can be launched in large numbers within minutes to handle traffic spikes.
A major benefit is the elasticity provided by AWS—resources can be increased when needed and released when demand decreases, which helps control cost. This avoids the limitations of traditional on-premise systems where scaling requires purchasing new hardware. In daily operations, Amazon Linux has been reliable and efficient for applications that require quick scaling and consistent performance across large fleets of EC2 instances.
I would rate AWS customer service 10 out of 10. I have used the AWS Support Center multiple times, and in most cases a support engineer has responded within a few minutes. This has been consistent not only for Amazon Linux–related issues but also for other AWS services such as EC2, S3, and databases.
AWS support has been available 24/7 in my experience, and the engineers are knowledgeable, quick to troubleshoot, and clear in their guidance. They provide step-by-step solutions, help identify the root cause, and ensure the issue is resolved efficiently. Overall, AWS customer service has been reliable, responsive, and extremely helpful whenever we needed assistance.
Positive
Yes, I’ve seen ROI with Amazon Linux. It integrates smoothly with other AWS services and tools we use, including Jenkins pipelines, which reduces setup time and simplifies CI/CD operations. Since Amazon Linux is free and doesn’t require any additional licensing, it provides immediate cost savings compared to paid Linux distributions.
The long-term support (LTS) model, consistent security patching, and predictable release cycles also reduce the operational effort required to maintain servers. These factors help lower maintenance costs and improve stability, which contributes to overall ROI in our production environment.
Before choosing Amazon Linux, we also worked with other Linux distributions like Ubuntu and Red Hat. While these flavors are reliable and widely used, our workloads were already heavily dependent on AWS services such as EC2, S3, CloudWatch, IAM, and VPC. Because of this, Amazon Linux became the natural fit for us. It integrates seamlessly with the AWS ecosystem and provides an optimized experience for EC2-based applications.
Compared to other Linux distributions, the main differences we noticed were in the level of integration and performance tuning. Amazon Linux comes with AWS-tuned kernel parameters, ENA networking optimizations, and built-in tools like the AWS CLI, SSM Agent, and CloudInit. This allowed our workloads to run more efficiently with lower CPU overhead and faster boot times.
Ubuntu and Red Hat offer larger communities, more package availability, and broader on-premise support, which are advantages in hybrid environments. However, Amazon Linux is lightweight, stable, secure by default, and specifically optimized for AWS hardware. Since our entire infrastructure relies on AWS services, choosing Amazon Linux simplified management, improved performance, and aligned better with our cloud-native architecture.
I would rate Amazon Linux a 9 out of 10. In my experience using it for production workloads over the past several years, Amazon Linux has been stable, lightweight, and well-optimized for AWS environments. The built-in integration with AWS services and continuous security updates makes it easy to manage, especially when working across EC2, EKS, and containerized applications. Overall, it has been reliable and efficient for the type of workloads I handle on a daily basis.
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.
My use case for Amazon Linux is mostly for running containers.
I am using SELinux for enhanced security in Amazon Linux, and it is helpful for me.
I find that the functions or features of Amazon Linux that are most valuable are ones that I haven't specifically mentioned.
The main benefits I receive from Amazon Linux are saving time and streamlining some work processes.
I use Python, as Amazon Linux includes some pre-installed libraries and tools such as Python, Ruby, and Node.js.
In my opinion, for improvement, Amazon Linux could make better integration with third-party vendors, perhaps enhance user experience or lower the price compared to other Linux solutions.
For the future, it would be great to see Amazon Linux have more wide functionality to work with other systems.
I have been working with Amazon Linux for eight years.
I rate the stability of Amazon Linux as a nine.
I understand the scalability aspects and I think they are adequate.
I would rate the technical support from Amazon Linux as good enough.
I believe the response time and quality of support could be better, so I see quality as a single point of feedback.
Positive
I work with both Amazon Linux and Ubuntu because Ubuntu provides more wide functionalities than Amazon Linux.
The initial setup for Amazon Linux is straightforward, and I understand it well.
Regarding the pricing model of Amazon Linux, I think it could be more flexible or a bit cheaper for users, as I find Ubuntu is cheaper than Amazon Linux.
I am not using IPv6 and I'm okay with that.
On a scale of one to ten, I rate Amazon Linux an eight.
I work with Kubernetes tools. My job is L3 support and I troubleshoot Red Hat-based systems and Kubernetes. Those are my two areas and that is all I do. When a client's system breaks down, it is my job to fix it as much as possible.
In the last 12 months, I have been troubleshooting systems and training in Kubernetes.
I deploy applications atop it. I mostly use it as a server for various DevOps concerns. For example, I have a Kubernetes server running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ansible server running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It is a DevOps pipeline that is fed by these separate servers.
I just duplicate installations of my clients' machines in order to troubleshoot. The idea is that I am presented with a problem, a broken system. If I can clone it, I do and then I try to fix it locally on my own machine before I present the solution back to the client. It varies slightly, depending on what the clients are using it for. In my very last case, about 2 or 3 weeks ago, there were etcd clusters running on an Ubuntu machine managing a Patroni installation. I tried to set that up on my own systems and started troubleshooting from there.
Red Hat is definitely the reason why we go for Linux and why we choose it above Ubuntu. The idea is security and the inbuilt security features. We don't have separate security experts here, so we configure it ourselves. We choose those systems that already have a lot of security features. Red Hat SE Linux is something we appreciate.
Regarding the most valuable features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, flexibility is the biggest reason. The fact that I can easily manage kernel parameters is a testament to the flexibility of the operating system, and that is why we use it on virtually all our servers.
There are two reasons why I always turn to either Amazon Linux or Ubuntu. My preference for Amazon Linux is because of its SE Linux implementations. My preference for Linux entirely is because of its customizable nature. It is flexible and I can change it to fit whatever my applications' needs are.
I have been experimenting with new terminals, and I think that the default terminals for Linux machines in general could be improved. For example, Alacritty. I have been using these things extensively now, so they could do a good job improving their terminals.
I have been using the solution for about three years.
I have found it to be the most scalable solution and would rate it an 8.
I have been involved in setting it up from scratch in respect to fixing other peoples' systems, but never for my own use.
The setup was straightforward. I really appreciate how they make it easy to install Kubernetes. I find working with Kubernetes in the cloud easier than working with it on-prem, simply because of swap issues. I appreciate how easy it is to use Amazon Linux as compared to on-prem systems.
I deploy applications atop it. I mostly use it as a server for various DevOps concerns. For example, I have a Kubernetes server running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ansible server running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It is a DevOps pipeline that is fed by these separate servers.
We always enable Amazon Linux. We don't switch it off and we do not put it in permissive mode. Where there are issues regarding permissions that Amazon Linux has enforced, we fix them and make it work. SE Linux is enforced on our machines.
I have configured failover for clients using blue-green deployments, where we have identical servers running. That is how we implemented manual failover. They have identical systems running and when one stops working, for any reason, while we are fixing it, these clients remain live.
Whenever I deploy solutions on Amazon Linux, I almost never have to worry about the operating system. Whenever I have problems, it is from the application itself. I have honestly never had any problems with Amazon Linux, aside from disk space issues. But no problems with the operating system itself.
I work as a Linux Administrator, specifically in Linux Support.
I rate Amazon Linux a 9 out of 10.
