Can you Install EPEL on Amazon Linux 2023?
In today’s date, if you launch an EC2 instance, the default AMI that is selected is the latest Amazon Linux 2023 or AL2023. Ever since Amazon Linux 2023 was launched in Mar 2023, people were having questions about how can they install a software package from the EPEL repository.
However, the reality is Amazon Linux 2023 or (AL2023) doesn’t support EPEL. This also means you can not install EPEL on Amazon Linux 2023. Let’s explore it in a bit more detail to find out why I am saying so.
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What is Amazon Linux 2023?
Amazon Linux 2023 or AL2023 is an optimized version of Linux AMI provided by AWS. It is built on the latest innovations and claims to provide better security and performance compared to its predecessor Amazon Linux 2.
Here is how you can launch an Amazon Linux 2023 EC2 Instance. If you are using Amazon Linux 2 on AWS, one day you will be required to upgrade to AL2023 or Amazon Linux 2023 instance as support for Amazon Linux 2 will be ended in future.
What is EPEL?
EPEL stands for Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux. As the name says, It is a community-maintained repository of high-quality add-on packages for Enterprise Linux distributions, such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), CentOS, AlmaLinux, and Rocky Linux etc.
EPEL provides many packages that are not available in your core package repository such as Amazon Linux 2. All the packages in Epel are open-source and free to use. On top of that, it also provides you with newer package versions to install which of course are not added to the core Linux repository due to security reasons.
The EPEL team is constantly working to add new packages and update existing packages. This ensures that you will always have access to the latest and greatest software.
If you are using an Enterprise Linux distribution, EPEL is a great way to add more software to your system and to keep your software up-to-date.
Here are some of the benefits of using EPEL:
- Access to a wide variety of software
- High-quality packages
- Carefully selected and maintained packages
- Well-maintained repository
Can you Install EPEL on Amazon Linux 2023
The very simple answer as you would expect is NO.
EPEL is not supported on Amazon Linux 2033. The simple reason for it is that Amazon has decided to move away from using any third-party repositories in favour of its own repositories.
This helps Amazon ensure that all of the software that is available on Amazon Linux 2023 or AL2023 is fully tested and supported by Amazon.
So here are a few reasons you can not install Epel on Amazon Linux 2023-
- Better control of the software that is available to install on Amazon Linux 2023 Instance.
- Easier to maintain as AWS need not think about third-party repo and
- Improved security as AWS has better control over software available so it can patch any security vulnerability that is needed easily.
Conclusion
In this post, we learnt that EPEL or Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux provides us with software packages that are not usually available on our core Linux repository.
Having said that, we also learnt that EPEL is not supported on the latest Linux AMI from Amazon called Amazon Linux 2023 or AL2023. Which means you can not Install EPEL on Amazon Linux 2023.
So the summary is, If you are using a previous version of Amazon Linux like Amazon Linux 2, you can still enable the EPEL repository. However, if you are using Amazon Linux 2023, you will need to use the software that is available in the Amazon Linux repositories.
Note: You can compile software from the source anytime even in Amazon Linux 2023. It’s just that it’s not straightforward like using a repo.
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