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Amazon Linux vs LAMP Stack Ubuntu comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
4.9
Amazon Linux offers cost savings, efficiency, and scalability through zero licensing fees, seamless AWS integration, and ARM optimization.
Sentiment score
6.6
Open-source components saved $30,000-$50,000 annually, improved efficiency by 60%, and enhanced user experience for over 100 students.
With Amazon Linux, selecting and launching instances on a public cloud provider means the machine spins up in fewer than ten seconds, making it efficient.
Cloud Solution Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
By switching the compute fleet from a paid distribution to Amazon Linux, we have reduced our OS-related overhead cost by 100%.
System engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Some wins commonly seen after switching, particularly when moving from general-purpose distributions such as Ubuntu, include approximately twenty to forty percent better price-performance ratio.
configuration and management deployment at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
We do not need to worry about setting up each component individually.
Senior Site Reliability Engineer at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
LAMP Stack Ubuntu is very easy to use and it's free.
EdTech Project manager at Aulab
I have seen a return on investment because the company benefits greatly from deploying on the data centers and providing access to customers' websites on the World Wide Web.
Support Engineer at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.2
Amazon Linux support is highly rated for fast responses, knowledgeable engineers, and excellent problem-solving, ensuring user satisfaction.
Sentiment score
5.1
Canonical offers enterprise support, while users often rely on community resources for stable and reliable Ubuntu LAMP Stack assistance.
Amazon has the best expertise and they are available 24/7.
IT Analyst | Aws Cloud Ops | Dev Ops | Fin Ops at Tata Consultancy
Timely and helpful responses for performance, updates, or AWS integration issues.
QA Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
It offers specific advantages and constraints depending on the use case.
Cloud Architect at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
I do not pay Canonical for enterprise-tier OS support, but the public community support for LAMP Stack Ubuntu is unmatched.
Cloud Engineer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
The customer support for LAMP Stack Ubuntu is very supportive due to its popularity and community support.
Senior Site Reliability Engineer at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
There is no formal customer support for LAMP Stack Ubuntu, but there is a great global IT community.
EdTech Project manager at Aulab
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
Amazon Linux boasts high scalability, seamless AWS integration, and consistent reliability for efficient vertical and horizontal scaling across regions.
Sentiment score
7.1
LAMP Stack Ubuntu offers vertical and horizontal scaling, enhanced by cloud integration, but database layers may limit scalability.
Since it is tightly integrated with AWS services, I can easily scale instances up or down based on demand using EC2 auto-scaling and load balancing.
Technical Team Lead - Content Security at Valuepoint Systems
Its real scalability comes from its seamless integration with AWS tools like CloudFormation, Auto Scaling, and user data scripts, which allow me to deploy and configure hundreds of identical ready-to-use instances automatically.
Student at Unemployed at the moment
The beauty here is that we can scale it immediately, which also saves cost.
IT Analyst | Aws Cloud Ops | Dev Ops | Fin Ops at Tata Consultancy
We can simply set up enterprise applications, and it includes tools like mod_cache and reverse proxies to improve performance.
Senior Site Reliability Engineer at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
LAMP architecture specifies the software components for each layer, so developers can replace them as they see fit.
EdTech Project manager at Aulab
The stateless design of LAMP Stack Ubuntu allows easy horizontal scaling because no state is stored.
Software Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.5
Amazon Linux ensures reliability and security with stable performance, seamless updates, and AWS integration, ideal for high-availability architectures.
Sentiment score
8.4
LAMP Stack Ubuntu is praised for reliability, strong MySQL support, minimal crashes, and stability with proper configuration and updates.
Combined with AWS managed infrastructure, it provides enterprise-grade reliability suitable for production workloads.
Software Engineer at INSTITUTE OF AERONAUTICAL ENGINEERING
Since it is purpose-built for the cloud, it lacks the bloat of traditional desktop-focused distributions, which leads to fewer crashes and higher uptime.
System engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Compared to other Linux distributions, Amazon Linux is significantly more stable for AWS workloads because it is pre-optimized for EC2 hypervisor and includes integrated AWS tools out of the box.
FullStack Developer at EnactOn Technologies
MySQL is a rock-solid database that supports compliance, ACID, and works out of the box quite well.
Software Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Once system memory allocations are tuned, an Ubuntu LAMP server can run continuously for months without a single daemon crash or memory leak.
Cloud Engineer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Regarding the stability of LAMP Stack Ubuntu, I have not seen any kind of disruptions.
Solution And Software Architect at AppEvolve
 

Room For Improvement

Migrating to Amazon Linux 2023 faces challenges with package availability, unclear documentation, lacking third-party support, and integration issues.
Enhance LAMP Stack with Nginx, PHP-FPM, Docker, SSL/TLS, Apache optimizations, modern UI, cloud support, and automated security.
Documentation explaining the differences between Ubuntu and Amazon Linux would be valuable.
full stack developer at 71Lbs
Since we are working in a real-time manner and need to scale things immediately, the time it takes to boot an instance and then deploy things is preventing me from giving it a perfect rating.
Senior Data Engineer at a transportation company with 501-1,000 employees
My advice for others looking into using Amazon Linux is to make sure the command line is easy and that Amazon Linux has more performance than other Linux environments and is more secure than other Linux environments as well.
DevOps Engineer at Wissen infotech
To make LAMP Stack Ubuntu enterprise-ready, one must switch from MPM Prefork to MPM Event and pair it with PHP-FPM.
Cloud Engineer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
We cannot use other languages like Python or Ruby to deploy our application over LAMP Stack Ubuntu.
Senior Site Reliability Engineer at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
PHP is just slower than Go, Rust, or .NET, and it is just suitable for non-performance critical applications; it is much slower than compiled languages.
Software Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
 

Setup Cost

Amazon Linux offers cost-effective deployment with no license fees, enhancing appeal for enterprises seeking budget-friendly alternatives.
LAMP Stack Ubuntu users save money with its open-source nature, simple setup, and hassle-free licensing and configuration management.
With Amazon Linux itself, there is no cost associated with using it, so I would say it is very good from a pricing perspective.
Cloud Ops Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
If I am a new AWS customer, the AWS Free Tier typically includes, for the first six months, micro instances such as t2.micro or t3.micro for free.
Software Engineer at INSTITUTE OF AERONAUTICAL ENGINEERING
I only pay for the EC2 instance and any other AWS resources I use, but the operating system itself has no licensing fees, which is a significant advantage over commercial operating systems like Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Windows servers, which incur extra hourly charges.
Student at Unemployed at the moment
We do not need to worry about licensing costs since it is open source.
Senior Site Reliability Engineer at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
LAMP Stack Ubuntu is completely open source, so there is no pricing, no cost, and no licensing.
EdTech Project manager at Aulab
The licensing part is very convenient and does not incur additional costs, allowing us to have planned calculations.
System Engineer at a healthcare company with 11-50 employees
 

Valuable Features

Amazon Linux offers cost-effective, reliable performance with AWS integration, security features, and documentation for enhanced productivity and deployment efficiency.
LAMP Stack Ubuntu provides cost-effective, scalable, and secure open-source solutions with extensive community support for easy application deployment.
Amazon Linux handles this automatically. It is optimized for EC2, AWS hardware and software, mostly secure and stable, and there is no additional cost.
IT Analyst | Aws Cloud Ops | Dev Ops | Fin Ops at Tata Consultancy
In terms of service security, there are many constraint security protocols and policies that help me create our own networks, security groups, and inline policies.
Software Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Amazon Linux's security updates have been helpful in general because I have had to be more specific in using the Identity Access Management (IAM) service so that we can have role-based permissions in preference to just keeping it open.
Fullstack Developer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The best features LAMP Stack Ubuntu offers are easy installation, stability, security, and being open source, so we do not need to worry about licensing costs.
Senior Site Reliability Engineer at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
Being entirely open source eliminates the licensing cost and all the other costs that are required for startup and enterprise companies, while it also provides Ubuntu stability.
Associate System Engineer at Dhanyaayai enterprise private limited
Out of those features, the one that stands out to me the most in my day-to-day work is horizontal scaling simplicity; this is LAMP's superpower.
Software Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Linux
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
14th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
LAMP Stack Ubuntu
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
18th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category, the mindshare of Amazon Linux is 1.6%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of LAMP Stack Ubuntu is 0.2%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Operating Systems (OS) for Business Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon Linux1.6%
LAMP Stack Ubuntu0.2%
Other98.2%
Operating Systems (OS) for Business
 

Featured Reviews

Saurab Gnagurde - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Analyst | Aws Cloud Ops | Dev Ops | Fin Ops at Tata Consultancy
“Amazon Linux delivers automated security updates— including live kernel patching in AL2023—ensuring protected workloads with minimal manual effort and zero-downtime patching.”
One improvement for Amazon Linux would be stronger support for running it outside AWS. Although Amazon provides local VM images for VirtualBox and VMware, they are intended mainly for development and testing. Unlike Ubuntu, Debian, or Red Hat, Amazon Linux is not designed or fully supported as a production OS in on-prem or hybrid environments. Expanding official support outside AWS would offer more flexibility for teams that maintain mixed infrastructure. Another area for improvement is the community ecosystem. Compared to Ubuntu or Red Hat, Amazon Linux has a smaller community and fewer third-party resources or tutorials. A larger ecosystem would make troubleshooting and adoption easier. Finally, improving backward compatibility between Amazon Linux 2 and Amazon Linux 2023—especially around package management (DNF vs yum) and updated toolchains—would simplify upgrades for teams managing large fleets.
HS
Cloud Engineer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
DevOps experience has delivered reliable web hosting and ongoing optimization for client sites
Regarding how LAMP Stack Ubuntu can be improved, several improvement areas exist. The default Apache performance is an area of concern, as standard Apache deployments can become RAM-heavy under certain traffic spikes if left on default multi-processing modules. To make LAMP Stack Ubuntu enterprise-ready, one must switch from MPM Prefork to MPM Event and pair it with PHP-FPM. This is crucial because an unoptimized stack will choke under load. Additionally, there are security hygiene limitations and state dispersal and auto-scaling issues. Traditionally, LAMP Stack Ubuntu houses application logic, PHP, temporary files, sessions, and databases on a single local OS layer, creating horizontal scaling limits. Offloading MySQL to AWS RDS and using shared S3 or EFS paths for core storage is required for modern cloud elasticity.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
14%
Educational Organization
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Construction Company
38%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise20
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Amazon Linux?
Amazon Linux made a great change with the last version and made some features incompatible with the old version, so I did not like the new version and still prefer not to use Amazon Linux. Some opt...
What is your primary use case for Amazon Linux?
I use Amazon Linux on EC2 machines for different kinds of servers. I typically run automation scripts, deploy fast web servers, and use Docker machines for testing purposes and any other proprietar...
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon Linux?
All Linux distributions have stability and security. The only advantage of Amazon Linux is the package system. I did not see any other great advantage. I prefer to use Ubuntu as my main option when...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for LAMP Stack Ubuntu?
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing includes using a free version, as I did not acquire any enterprise version of LAMP Stack Ubuntu.
What needs improvement with LAMP Stack Ubuntu?
Regarding how LAMP Stack Ubuntu can be improved, several improvement areas exist. The default Apache performance is an area of concern, as standard Apache deployments can become RAM-heavy under cer...
What is your primary use case for LAMP Stack Ubuntu?
LAMP Stack Ubuntu is primarily used to deploy applications, specifically WordPress applications on clients' AWS accounts. I began learning this stack at the start of my career, studying how to inst...
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Linux vs. LAMP Stack Ubuntu and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.