AWS announced today the public preview of Amazon Linux 2027. Given the time since Amazon Linux 2023, Amazon Linux 2027 comes with a heavy arsenal of software updates as well as many performance optimizations and other tuning for better running workloads geared for the AWS cloud.

Amazon Linux 2027 is making use of the Linux 7.1 kernel by default, is now enabling SELinux in enforcing mode by default, features new accelerator drivers, and a variety of other improvements.

Amazon Linux 2027 packages are also now all built with the -O2 optimization level, packages are built with Link Time Optimizations (LTO) enabled for better performance, and the x86-64 packages now target x86-64-v3 for assuming AVX/AVX2. Amazon Linux 2027 packages are also now built with auto-vectorization enabled.

In enhancing ARM performance, for AArch64 Graviton instances on Amazon Linux 2027 is also enabling Transparent Hugepages (THP) for malloc heap arenas by default.

Amazon Linux 2027 is also using the new GCC 16.1 compiler by default along with LLVM/Clang 22 and updated versions of Rust and Go. On the package manager side is DNF5. Amazon Linux 2027 is partly based on Fedora 44 and Fedora 45.

More details on Amazon Linux 2027 can be found via [1]the AWS blog . The [2]release notes have all the interesting details on the technical changes with Amazon Linux 2027. I'll be working on running some Amazon Linux 2027 benchmarks shortly.



[1] https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2026/09/announcing-amazon-linux-2027/

[2] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/linux/al2027/ug/what-is-amazon-linux-2027.html