Which Operating Systems Do AWS AMIs Support in Amazon EC2?

Amazon Web Services provides officially supported Amazon Machine Images for several major operating system families in Amazon EC2, including Amazon Linux, Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Debian, Microsoft Windows Server, and Apple macOS. This article provides a comprehensive breakdown of these officially supported operating systems, their typical enterprise and cloud-native use cases, licensing models, and architecture compatibility across x86 and ARM-based AWS Graviton processors.

Amazon Linux

Amazon Linux is AWS's own Linux distribution, engineered specifically to run on Amazon EC2. It offers tight integration with AWS services, pre-installed AWS tools, and optimized performance for EC2 instance types.

• Amazon Linux 2023 (AL2023): The current generation of Amazon Linux, featuring a predictable two-year major release cycle and long-term support. It uses deterministic updates via versioned repositories, SELinux enabled in permissive mode by default, and optimized kernel configurations for both x86_64 and ARM64 (AWS Graviton) architectures.
• Amazon Linux 2 (AL2): The previous-generation distribution, offering long-term support for legacy workloads transitioning to newer environments.
• Licensing and Cost: Provided at no additional charge beyond standard EC2 instance compute and storage costs.

Enterprise Linux Distributions

AWS partners directly with major commercial Linux vendors to provide certified, ready-to-launch AMIs that include optional support subscriptions billed directly through the AWS account.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is widely used for mission-critical enterprise workloads, databases, and commercial software requiring strict certification.

• Supported Versions: RHEL 7, RHEL 8, and RHEL 9 (plus specialized variants like RHEL for SAP).
• Architectures: x86_64 and ARM64.
• Licensing: Available as Pay-As-You-Go (hourly software charges bundled into EC2 pricing) or through Red Hat Cloud Access (Bring Your Own Subscription).

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES)

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is a popular choice for enterprise computing, high-performance computing, and SAP HANA deployments on AWS.

• Supported Versions: SLES 12 and SLES 15, including SLES for SAP Applications.
• Architectures: x86_64 and ARM64.
• Licensing: Available with on-demand hourly licensing or Bring Your Own Subscription (BYOS).

Community and Open-Source Linux Distributions

For developers and organizations preferring open-source distributions without mandatory commercial licensing fees, AWS provides official quick-start AMIs maintained in collaboration with the respective distribution vendors.

Ubuntu Server and Ubuntu Pro

Maintained by Canonical, Ubuntu is one of the most popular operating systems on EC2 for web applications, container hosts, and machine learning workloads.

• Supported Versions: Long Term Support (LTS) releases such as Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa), Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish), and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat).
• Ubuntu Pro: AWS also offers Ubuntu Pro AMIs, which include expanded security maintenance, kernel livepatching, and FIPS/CIS compliance tooling on an hourly billing model.
• Architectures: x86_64 and ARM64.

Debian

Debian GNU/Linux is known for its stability, minimal footprint, and extensive package repositories.

• Supported Versions: Debian 11 (Bullseye) and Debian 12 (Bookworm).
• Architectures: x86_64 and ARM64.
• Licensing: Free to use; users pay only for the underlying EC2 resources.

Container-Optimized Operating Systems

For workloads running on Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) or Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), AWS provides purpose-built AMIs.

• Bottlerocket: An open-source, Linux-based operating system purpose-built by AWS for hosting containers. It features a minimal attack surface, atomic updates that can be rolled back automatically, and read-only root filesystems.
• ECS-Optimized and EKS-Optimized AMIs: Built on top of Amazon Linux 2023, Amazon Linux 2, or Windows Server, pre-configured with Docker/containerd, the ECS agent, or kubelet.

Microsoft Windows Server

AWS provides a comprehensive catalog of official Microsoft Windows Server AMIs for running .NET applications, Active Directory, Microsoft SQL Server, and legacy Windows workloads.

• Supported Versions: Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2022, and Windows Server 2025.
• Variants: Available in Full (Desktop Experience) and Server Core (headless, minimal footprint) installations. AWS also provides Windows Server AMIs pre-installed with Microsoft SQL Server (Express, Web, Standard, and Enterprise editions) and .NET runtime environments.
• Architectures: x86_64.
• Licensing: License Included (LI) AMIs bundle the Microsoft license cost into the EC2 instance hourly rate. Customers can also use Bring Your Own License (BYOL) on Dedicated Hosts or through AWS License Manager with eligible Microsoft Volume Licensing agreements.

Apple macOS

Through Amazon EC2 Mac instances, AWS officially supports macOS for developers building, testing, and signing applications for Apple platforms (iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS, and visionOS).

• Supported Versions: Recent versions of macOS (such as macOS Monterey, Ventura, Sonoma, and Sequoia) delivered as macOS AMIs backed by Amazon EBS.
• Architectures: x86_64 (mac1 instances powered by Intel processors) and ARM64 (mac2 instances powered by Apple Silicon M1, M2, and M2 Pro chips).
• Deployment Requirements: Due to Apple licensing terms, EC2 Mac instances must be launched on Dedicated Hosts with a minimum allocation period of 24 hours.

Summary Comparison of Official AWS AMIs