This topic describes the features and advantages of Alibaba Cloud Linux.
Features
Alibaba Cloud Linux is integrated with the latest version of the Alibaba Cloud kernel.
Alibaba Cloud Linux 2 is developed based on Linux kernel 4.19 LTS, and Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 is developed based on Linux kernel 5.10 LTS. Alibaba Cloud Linux is optimized to provide features for cloud-based scenarios, improve performance, and fix bugs. For more information, see Release notes for Alibaba Cloud Linux 2 and Release notes for Alibaba Cloud Linux 3.
Alibaba Cloud Linux provides customized and optimized kernel startup parameters and system configuration parameters for the Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance environment.
Alibaba Cloud Linux provides kdump, which is a kernel dumping mechanism that is used when the operating system fails. You can enable or disable this feature without the need to restart the operating system.
Alibaba Cloud Linux provides Kernel Live Patching (KLP). For more information, see Overview of the Kernel Live Patching feature.
Alibaba Cloud Linux has software pre-installed or updated.
User-mode packages are compatible with new CentOS versions. The user-mode packages of CentOS 7 can be used on Alibaba Cloud Linux 2. The user-mode packages of CentOS 8 can be used on Alibaba Cloud Linux 3.
Alibaba Cloud Linux is pre-installed with Alibaba Cloud CLI.
Fixes for common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) are continuously updated until the end of life (EOL) of Alibaba Cloud Linux. For more information, see Alibaba Cloud Linux 2.1903 Security Advisories and Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 Security Advisories. Alibaba Cloud Linux provides solutions to automatically fix vulnerabilities. For more information, see Use YUM to perform security updates.
Alibaba Cloud Linux accelerates the startup process, improves runtime performance, and enhances system stability.
Alibaba Cloud Linux optimizes the startup speed of ECS instances. Test results show that Alibaba Cloud Linux can reduce the startup time by up to 60% compared with other operating systems.
Alibaba Cloud Linux optimizes the scheduling, memory, and I/O subsystems. In some open-source benchmark tests, Alibaba Cloud Linux outperforms other operating systems by up to 30%.
Alibaba Cloud Linux provides enhanced system stability and can reduce downtime by 50% compared with other operating systems.
Advantages
Alibaba Cloud Linux has the following advantages over other Linux distributions:
Alibaba Cloud provides software maintenance and technical support free of charge for Alibaba Cloud Linux. For information about the EOL plans for different Alibaba Cloud Linux releases, see the EOL plans of Alibaba Cloud Linux section of the "Maintenance support for operating systems" topic.
Alibaba Cloud Linux is optimized for integration with Alibaba Cloud infrastructure to improve the system startup speed and runtime performance. Alibaba Cloud Linux has been long-tested and refined from its extensive use in Alibaba and Alibaba Cloud services and provides outstanding performance and stability.
Alibaba Cloud Linux is equipped with an updated Linux kernel, user-mode packages, and toolkits and provides the most recent enhanced operating system features from the Linux community to support cloud-based application environments.
Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 is powered by Linux kernel 5.10 LTS and uses GCC 10.2, Binutils 2.35, and glibc 2.32 by default.
Alibaba Cloud Linux 2 is powered by Linux kernel 4.19 LTS and provides devtoolset support for GCC 7.3.1, GCC 8.2.1, and GCC 9.1.1. For information about how to use devtoolset, see the Use experimental software packages section of the "Use Alibaba Cloud Linux 2" topic.
Alibaba Cloud Linux is compatible with the CentOS and RHEL ecosystems. Most CentOS and RHEL software can run on Alibaba Cloud Linux with little to no modifications.
Alibaba Cloud Linux 3 is built on Anolis OS 8 and compatible with the CentOS 8 and RHEL 8 ecosystems.
Alibaba Cloud Linux 2 is built on Anolis OS 7 and compatible with the CentOS 7 and RHEL 7 ecosystems.
Alibaba Cloud Linux provides policies to monitor and fix security vulnerabilities and ensure system security. For more information, see Security advisories.