G2

Prakhar J.

Security Engineer

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

6/15/2026

"Lightweight and AWS-Ready: Amazon Linux 2 Boots Fast for Auto Scaling"

4.5/5

What do you like best about Amazon Linux 2?

If I’m being honest, as an admin responsible for managing multiple environments, the best part about Amazon Linux 2 is that it’s lightweight and AWS-ready. It’s free of bloatware and the extra programs you often see in other standard distributions. Since we’re dealing with multiple instances and auto scaling groups, boot time really matters. Amazon Linux 2 boots up super fast and gives us a head start to make the necessary changes. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Amazon Linux 2?

There isn’t much to dislike about Amazon Linux 2, but there are a few points worth mentioning. First is the End of Life, which is happening at the end of this month. Because of that, our team has to take on a large-scale migration from Amazon Linux 2 to Amazon Linux 2023. This isn’t a simple upgrade, since Amazon Linux 2023 uses the dnf package manager, so we basically have to sit down and re-test our automation scripts and applications from scratch.

Second, our day-to-day struggle is with packages. Since Amazon Linux 2 ships with RHEL 7–version packages, the default repos are quite outdated. When we need a newer python3, node.js, or similar libraries, we have to rely on the amazon-linux-extras repo to get more recent tools, which can sometimes create dependency clashes. It takes time, and it can be tough to manage. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Amazon Linux 2 solving and how is that benefiting you?

The main problem it solves for us is providing a very stable, RHEL-like environment directly on AWS without paying any extra OS licensing fees. Whenever we deploy one of our custom applications, we need an OS that’s stable and reliable, offers strong customization, and is properly supported.

Since it comes pre-optimized for EC2, we don’t have to spend hours tweaking kernel or network parameters. It also saves us the cost and effort of procuring a separate OS, because it comes with the instance. For our admins, it’s been easy to maintain because it works almost like RHEL, so the learning curve was basically zero. We’ve used it for years, but now it’s going EOL. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.