Announcing Amazon Linux 2 with Long Term Support (LTS)
Amazon Linux 2 is now generally available and comes with 5 years of long term support (LTS). It incorporates feedback received for two LTS candidate builds that were released on December 13, 2017 and April 9, 2018 respectively. Amazon Linux 2 is the next generation Amazon Linux operating system that provides an updated Linux Kernel (4.14) tuned for optimal performance on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), systemd support, a newer compiler (GCC 7.3), an updated C runtime (Glibc 2.26), modern tooling (Binutils 2.29.1), and the latest software packages through the extras mechanisms.
Amazon Linux 2 is now generally available and comes with 5 years of long term support (LTS). It incorporates feedback received for two LTS candidate builds that were released on December 13, 2017 and April 9, 2018 respectively. Amazon Linux 2 is the next generation Amazon Linux operating system that provides an updated Linux Kernel (4.14) tuned for optimal performance on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), systemd support, a newer compiler (GCC 7.3), an updated C runtime (Glibc 2.26), modern tooling (Binutils 2.29.1), and the latest software packages through the extras mechanisms.
The extras mechanism in Amazon Linux 2 provides the latest application software on a stable base of Amazon Linux 2. Extras provides topics to select AWS curated software bundles (e.g. newer versions of popular software packages such as MATE desktop environment, Python, MariaDB, Node.js, etc.). Each extras topic contains all the dependencies required for the software to run and contain rapidly evolving technologies and are likely to be updated frequently.
Amazon Linux 2 is available as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) for use on Amazon EC2, and as a Docker container image for use in any Docker environment. It is also available as Virtual Machine (VM) images for Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM), Oracle VM VirtualBox, Microsoft Hyper-V, and VMware ESXi for on-premises development and testing.
Amazon Linux 2 is available in all public regions and provided at no additional cost beyond the Amazon EC2 instance usage. The on-premises virtual machine images and Docker containers are also provided at no cost.
To learn more about Amazon Linux 2, refer to the Amazon Linux webpage and frequently asked questions.