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Alibaba Cloud Linux:Overview

Last Updated:Mar 25, 2024

Alibaba Cloud Linux is a Linux operating system distribution developed by Alibaba Cloud. Alibaba Cloud continuously integrates achievements from open source communities into Alibaba Cloud Linux to provide enhanced Linux features for applications in the cloud, and uses a high-standard quality control system to ensure the quality of Alibaba Cloud Linux distributions. Alibaba Cloud Linux is also deeply optimized based on the Alibaba Cloud infrastructure and provides users with enterprise-level support and maintenance for up to 10 years. This improves the operating system experience for users.

For more information, visit the Alibaba Cloud Linux 2 product page.

Scope

Alibaba Cloud Linux is suitable for the following Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance families and workloads:

  • Various instance families, including ECS Bare Metal Instance families. For more information, see Overview of instance families.

    • Alibaba Cloud Linux supports instances that have 1 vCPU to 768 vCPUs.

    • Alibaba Cloud Linux supports instances that have 0.5 GiB to 12,288 GiB of memory.

    • Alibaba Cloud Linux does not support non-I/O optimized instances.

  • A variety of workloads in cloud environments, such as databases, cloud native containers, data analytics, web applications, and other workloads in the production environment.

Billing

Alibaba Cloud Linux images are provided free of charge. However, you must pay for other resources that are consumed when you create ECS instances from Alibaba Cloud Linux images, such as vCPUs, memory, storage, public bandwidth, and snapshots. For more information about the billing details, see Billing overview.

Security advisories

Maintenance cycles

Release

End-of-support date

Alibaba Cloud Linux 3

2031-04-30

Alibaba Cloud Linux 2

2024-03-31

Images

Release

Image name

Image description

Alibaba Cloud Linux 3

Alibaba Cloud Linux 3.2104 64-bit

The default standard Alibaba Cloud Linux image that supports the x86 architecture.

Alibaba Cloud Linux 3.2104 64-bit (Quick Start)

This image is customized based on the Alibaba Cloud kernel. This image supports quick boot (Qboot) and boots instances from the kernel. Instances that are created from this image start faster than instances that are created from other images, and share the same default runtime as instances that are created from the standard image. This image has the following characteristics:

  • The initial startup of instances is accelerated, whereas the subsequent startup of instances remains at normal speed.

  • The memory initialization process is optimized and accelerated, devices that require a long period of time to start, such as mice, are modularized, and the kernel boot is accelerated.

  • The cloud-init service is replaced with the AliyunInit service to reduce the amount of time that is required to initialize the operating system.

  • The kernel of this image cannot be modified.

  • This image does not support the following instance families: GPU-accelerated compute-optimized instance families, vGPU-accelerated instance families, FPGA-accelerated compute-optimized instance families, NPU-accelerated compute-optimized instance families, heterogeneous instance families, Super Computing Cluster (SCC) instance families, and security-enhanced instance families.

Alibaba Cloud Linux 3.2104 64-bit (UEFI)

This image is developed based on the default x86-based standard image and supports only the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) boot mode.

Alibaba Cloud Linux 3.2104 64-bit for ARM

The default standard Alibaba Cloud Linux image that supports the ARM architecture.

Alibaba Cloud Linux 2

Alibaba Cloud Linux 2.1903 LTS 64-bit

The default standard Alibaba Cloud Linux image that supports the x86 architecture.

Alibaba Cloud Linux 2.1903 LTS 64-bit (Quick Start)

This image is customized based on the Alibaba Cloud kernel. This image supports quick boot (Qboot) and boots instances from the kernel. Instances that are created from this image start faster than instances that are created from other images, and share the same default runtime as instances that are created from the standard image. This image has the following characteristics:

  • The initial startup of instances is accelerated, whereas the subsequent startup of instances remains at normal speed.

  • The memory initialization process is optimized and accelerated, devices that require a long period of time to start, such as mice, are modularized, and the kernel boot is accelerated.

  • The cloud-init service is replaced with the AliyunInit service to reduce the amount of time that is required to initialize the operating system.

  • The kernel of this image cannot be modified.

  • This image does not support the following instance families: GPU-accelerated compute-optimized instance families, vGPU-accelerated instance families, FPGA-accelerated compute-optimized instance families, NPU-accelerated compute-optimized instance families, heterogeneous instance families, Super Computing Cluster (SCC) instance families, and security-enhanced instance families.

Alibaba Cloud Linux 2.1903 LTS 64-bit (UEFI)

This image is developed based on the default x86-based standard image and supports only the UEFI boot mode.

Alibaba Cloud Linux 2.1903 64-bit (Trusted)

This image is developed based on the default x86-based standard image and supports Alibaba Cloud trusted instances.

For information about the image IDs of the latest Alibaba Cloud Linux versions, see Release notes for Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 and Release notes for Alibaba Cloud Linux 2.

References

  • For information about the features and advantages of Alibaba Cloud Linux, see Features and advantages.

  • For information about the differences between Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 and Alibaba Cloud Linux 2, see Differences between Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 and Alibaba Cloud Linux 2.

  • For information about how to use Alibaba Cloud Linux images in on-premises environments or in containers and how to modify and compile the Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) package of the Alibaba Cloud Linux kernel, see Getting started.

  • For information about how to obtain technical support for Alibaba Cloud Linux images or how to join a technical support group, see Contact technical support.