I'm doing a pilot project to port a bunch of AIX apps over to linux - with the ultimate goal of deploying the results on AWS.
For now, I'm just messing with it on my Kubuntu 18.04 desktop system - and making good progress. But I assume the path of least resistance on AWS is to use Amazon's distro. If that's based off of Red Hat, then maybe I should be using CentOS even at this proof-of-concept stage.
One more question. The most consistent porting issue that I keep running into is the fact that the original AIX build environment generates 32-bit code, and my Kubuntu system really wants to target 64-bit code (I tried building in 32-bit mode, but had too many issues and ultimately gave up). Fine, except that I'm running into a lot of 8-byte pointer and 8-byte long issues in the code base. If there is a distro that's well-supported on AWS and also has its build system targeted to build 32-bit code by default, that would be ideal. Unless that rug would eventually get pulled out from under me down the road ;-)
Any suggestions?
Yes, Amazon Linux 2 is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and you can even install it on your local machine using one of the images downloadable here: https://cdn.amazonlinux.com/os-images/2.0.20200304.0/
For Amazon Linux Docker container images, see amazonlinux on Docker Hub: https://hub.docker.com/_/amazonlinux/
After downloading the image, follow the Amazon Linux documentation to get started: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/amazon-linux-ami-basics.html