
Scientific Linux, the Great Distro With the Wrong Name - taylorbuley
https://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/557256:scientific-linux-the-great-distro-with-the-wrong-name
======
ghshephard
I've only heard of Scientific Linux once before (Ironically, in a HN posting)
- 100% of all the companies I work with (Bay area), or have colleagues working
at, use CentOS, until they get a lot of stodgy enterprise types working for
them, or need to call Oracle for support, or need to resell their product to
customers - at which point they switch (mostly) over to RedHat and start
paying licensing fees.

What is other other people's experience for *nix server environments that
deploy more than a hundred or so servers? (Presumably, at low server count,
it's whatever the guy deploying them decided to deploy at the time -
Suse/Debian/Ubuntu might all be in the mix - maybe even RHEL. )

Personally, I'm an Ubuntu + OpenBSD guy for my workgroup / personal servers,
except for Linode/Slicehost where I usually go with CentOS.

~~~
shuzchen
I personally moved my Linodes to SL from CentOS (since Linode doesn't offer SL
image, you start with centos base, switch mirrors, do update - pretty
painless) after CentOS took forever getting it's 6.0 version out.

It wasn't that CentOS took a long time, it was that the whole process lacked
transparency. You couldn't tell who was responsible for what and what the
plans were. If they published status reports it wasn't anywhere public (at
least, nowhere reachable through their site, google searches, or mentioned in
mailing lists). At the time, I had no idea who was in charge of CentOS, who
worked on it and kept it up with security updates. Even nowadays it's not so
clear (the menu dropdown lists their team members, but seriously, CentOS 2.1
lead is on there? Nobody is listed as being responsible for 6, and there's
only one guy listed as being responsible for security).

Contrast this with SL, where they have paid staff working on the project
(<http://www.scientificlinux.org/about/credit>), publish a clear roadmap
(<http://www.scientificlinux.org/distributions/roadmap>) and have a security
policy in place (<http://www.scientificlinux.org/documentation/faq/errata>).
If you want real guarantees, then you should pay RedHat or Oracle. If you need
a free high quality RHEL clone, I recommend SL over CentOS.

Also, being on Linode also means I don't use the SL kernel (with it's custom
patches). I use the ones provided by Linode, and security on that end is taken
care of by them, so that difference doesn't affect me.

------
pjmlp
I was working at CERN in 2004 and if my memory does not fail me, the article
is not 100% accurate.

Scientific Linux is the result of merging Fermilab and CERN's Linux
distributions.

It is a Linux distribution customized to provide out of the box, all the tools
used by any research project from both labs.

It was not intended to be used outside research institutions.

~~~
nagrom
This isn't true; at least it wasn't a year ago. SL, out of the box, doesn't
include all the cernlibs or the ROOT libs and is even a royal PITA to get
these things to compile on. Don't even think about things like ADAMO or PAW. I
tried to get SL working for a day. I gave up and just installed Ubuntu.

~~~
pjmlp
It was true at CERN while I was there (01/2003-12/2004).

I remember the IT division had a nice SL installation where all ATLAS projects
where one yum away, if not included already on the default installation.

~~~
nagrom
SL lost its way in recent years. Right now, it seems little more than a
(basic, out-of-date) redhat clone. It could be much better - I don't
understand why it doesn't include GEANT4, ROOT and the associated CERNlibs,
matplotlib, Octave and R out of the box. If I have a distribution called
'Scientific Linux' sponsored by CERN and Fermilab, I expect that it least has
particle physics tools as part of the default ditro. :-(

------
javert
I don't really understand why science labs would _need_ a cusotmized distro.
Can anyone clue me in? What payoff do they get from one that offsets the cost
of creating and mantaining it?

~~~
streptomycin
RHEL is expensive.

~~~
javert
That's not much of an answer, given that there are dozens of free distros
already, any of which would appear suitable.

~~~
streptomycin
There's not dozens of RHEL clones. There is CentOS, but it's had its problems
lately and Scientific Linux predates it.

If you're suggesting that other random free distros are suitable when one is
looking at RHEL or an RHEL clone... well, that's rather silly.

~~~
javert
_If you're suggesting that other random free distros are suitable when one is
looking at RHEL or an RHEL clone... well, that's rather silly._

Call it silly if you want, but yes, I would like to know the answer to that.
I'm being perfectly serious. I've used several Linux distros (though maybe I'm
not an expert), and at the end of the day, they all run the same programs.

~~~
streptomycin
RHEL is extremely stable and releases are supported for much longer than other
Linux distros. Also, some commercial software is designed to work on specific
versions of RHEL.

------
grannyg00se
Great writeup outlining some of the features you get out of the box. But at
the end of the day, this is another RHEL clone. Other clones are mentioned,
like CentOS, but there is no clear motive to choose SciLinux over anything
else.

~~~
mhurron
Scientific Linux is faster at patching and keeping up with RHEL releases than
CentOS has been.

After the extremely long time between the release of RHEL6 and CentOS 6, I
don't know that I would choose to go with CentOS for new installs.

~~~
klaruz
I recommended the same thing to my clients for a while last year, CentOS 6 was
not getting updates at all for a time. They seem to have fixed that now
though, it looks to be safe to use CentOS 6 again. Of course, if you want fast
updates, pay RedHat.

------
zokier
The SL additions seem very inconsequential for most users. The article doesn't
imho give any good reasons to use SL instead of some other RHEL clone (such as
CentOS).

~~~
00joe
SL has a couple full time employees building it. Also, they publish a lot of
info about their build process. Centos doesn't. Sometime their releases are
slower.

~~~
keithpeter
PUIAS Linux also has an staff team building it, and more in the way of
mathematical software in their repositories.

I'm using it on a desktop at home behind a router & so I don't watch the
security updates especially.

You can add the PUIAS 'addon' and 'computational' repositories to a CentOS
desktop with appropriate use of yum-priorities.

------
secure
When I last had to deal with SL (about two years ago at my job back then), it
was a nightmare to deal with, and used linux 2.6.9 (!) with literally
thousands of custom patches. We needed to do some kernel development with it,
which was incredibly painful… (since it was totally different than vanilla
linux)

Also, it seemed like vastly under-manpowered.

~~~
krunaldo
Since they just repackage RHEL you were probably just running a 4.x release or
a early 5.x release... SL is mostly for people interested in running RHEL but
don't want to pay the licensing cost.

------
allanscu
I recall that Meebo was debating on switching over to Scientific Linux -
<http://blog.meebo.com/?p=3213>

I'm not sure what they ultimately decided to go forward with, but they were
considering SL and Ubuntu Server LTS to replace CentOS

------
nknight
I vaguely recall statements to the effect that the SL folks didn't really want
a lot of attention. Basically, that they're trying to meet the specific needs
of the organizations supporting its maintenance, and are afraid of the demands
on their already very limited resources should a large community coalesce
around SL.

If my impression is right, then this article is a little misdirected. The
small userbase and "wrong name" would not be considered problems by the
project itself.

