Honest question: Does anyone actually use Amazon Linux in production? Everywhere I've every worked used a mainstream distro for cloud servers, like Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat or SUSE.

I do. It works fine, particularly if you're using EKS- or ECS-optimized images.

We did, until this morning

aren't everyone using lambda functions? and aws infra itself? they migth only consider the urgency of internal teams, so anything !java will be pushed.