Ubuntu Begins Offering A Rolling Release Kernel For The Amazon Cloud

Canonical is transitioning Ubuntu's support in the Amazon AWS environment to have a rolling-release model for its kernel albeit other packages will remain under their traditional stable release update handling. At least though it's good they will be more punctually offering new kernel versions in the cloud

This new rolling kernel model is being offered in the name of providing "the latest upstream bug fixes and performance improvements around task scheduling, I/O scheduling, networking, hypervisor guests and containers to our users."

This rolling kernel model is just being offered right now for Ubuntu on Amazon Web Services (AWS) with no word on whether they plan to eventually offer it for other cloud environments by default. Compared to bare metal deployments where there is the greater risk of hardware quirks/regressions with a more rapidly moving kernel, offering new kernel releases for Ubuntu in the cloud should be more sane while benefiting from the constant upstream improvements in areas important to modern enterprises.

Ubuntu's linux-aws kernel will now follow new kernel releases more closely along with a new linux-aws-edge kernel for the preview of the next release. For those not wanting new kernel versions, sticking to the likes of "linux-aws-lts-18.04" will keep you at your current kernel release.

More details on the Ubuntu rolling kernel for Amazon AWS via the Ubuntu blog.