FreeBSD on EC2 Available Now
"For the FreeBSD community as a whole, I think it comes down to the fact that Amazon Web Services is the market leader -- other clouds each have their own advantages, but EC2 is the default first place to look." -- Colin Percival
Yesterday, Colin Percival, FreeBSD Security Officer, announced that FreeBSD is now available on Amazon EC2. What does EC2 availability mean to FreeBSD's future in the cloud? In an interview with Linux Pro Magazine, Percival said, "It's still pretty murky right now. This ‘availability’ is so far nowhere near the standard for stability which FreeBSD normally sets.” Percival says that he hopes the stability will improve. “It all depends on having people test it and find bugs," he says.
Percival says he doesn’t have any personal interest in other clouds. As a FreeBSD developer, however, he’s interested in working with other companies to help them make FreeBSD available on their systems, particularly if he can get paid to do the work.
In the announcement post, Percival noted that his biggest complaint about Amazon EC2 was the inability to run FreeBSD on it. "For me personally, I have a much more selfish motivation,” he says. “My online backup startup, Tarsnap, is built on top of Amazon Web Services, and the server code is running under Ubuntu. I have no specific objection to Ubuntu... but, well, it isn't FreeBSD," Percival adds.
When asked how many users started using FreeBSD on EC2 since the announcement was made, Percival said, “I have no idea. In hindsight, I should probably have set up this first test AMI to send me an email every time it was launched.” About 10 people have contacted Percival and stated they have launched instances, but he noted there are about 100 people on his "want to use FreeBSD on EC2 when it's available" mailing list.
There are several ways that users can get involved in the FreeBSD community, such as mailing lists, forums, and the FreeBSD on EC2 status page for users to follow. Beyond those resources, users can launch FreeBSD instances on EC2 and report any problems.
Issue 268/2023
Buy this issue as a PDF
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Find SysAdmin Jobs
News
-
KDE Plasma 5.27 Beta is Ready for Testing
The latest beta iteration of the KDE Plasma desktop is now available and includes some important additions and fixes.
-
Netrunner OS 23 Is Now Available
The latest version of this Linux distribution is now based on Debian Bullseye and is ready for installation and finally hits the KDE 5.20 branch of the desktop.
-
New Linux Distribution Built for Gamers
With a Gnome desktop that offers different layouts and a custom kernel, PikaOS is a great option for gamers of all types.
-
System76 Beefs Up Popular Pangolin Laptop
The darling of open-source-powered laptops and desktops will soon drop a new AMD Ryzen 7-powered version of their popular Pangolin laptop.
-
Nobara Project Is a Modified Version of Fedora with User-Friendly Fixes
If you're looking for a version of Fedora that includes third-party and proprietary packages, look no further than the Nobara Project.
-
Gnome 44 Now Has a Release Date
Gnome 44 will be officially released on March 22, 2023.
-
Nitrux 2.6 Available with Kernel 6.1 and a Major Change
The developers of Nitrux have officially released version 2.6 of their Linux distribution with plenty of new features to excite users.
-
Vanilla OS Initial Release Is Now Available
A stock GNOME experience with on-demand immutability finally sees its first production release.
-
Critical Linux Vulnerability Found to Impact SMB Servers
A Linux vulnerability with a CVSS score of 10 has been found to affect SMB servers and can lead to remote code execution.
-
Linux Mint 21.1 Now Available with Plenty of Look and Feel Changes
Vera has arrived and although it is still using kernel 5.15, there are plenty of improvements sure to please everyone.