Spacelift AMIs are now built on Amazon Linux 2023

We’re happy to announce that starting from the 20th of November all Spacelift AWS AMIs are built on top of Amazon Linux 2023. The benefits of AL 2023 includes improved security (many Linux kernel hardening features are enabled by default, easily configurable crypto policies), predictable lifecycle (new major version every 2 years, minor every 3 months) and deterministic updates. We opted for the minimal flavor of it which comes with basic tools and utilities preinstalled, keeping the AMI lightweight and optimized.

One other change is that the default package manager is now Fedora’sdnf, the successor ofyum. In case you inject any custom commands to the startup script, it’s worth to update theyumkeywords todnfeven though there is a symlink between the two.

If you’re interested in learning more, check out the announcement post of AL 2023.