Amazon Linux 2022 starting with 2022

Starting with AL2022, a new Amazon Linux major version will be available every two years and each version will be supported for five years. Customers will also be able to take advantage of quarterly updates via minor releases and use the latest software for their applications. Finally, AL2022 provides the ability to lock to a specific version of the Amazon Linux package repository giving customers control over how and when they absorb updates.

AL2022 uses the Fedora project as its upstream to provide customers with a wide variety of the latest software, such as updated language runtimes, as part of quarterly releases. In addition, AL2022 has SELinux enabled and enforced by default. This enables customers to improve their security posture, reduce the operational overhead that comes with managing custom security policies, and helps comply with common industry standards.

AL2022 is now available in preview in all commercial regions and is provided at no additional charge. AL2022 can be launch from AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell, RunInstances or via a AWS CloudFormation template.

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.