6 ms·

Scientific Linux, the Great Distro With the Wrong Name

85 points by taylorbuley 15y ago

nknight 15y ago
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.
ghshephard 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 http://www.scientificlinux.org/about/credit), publish a clear roadmap (http://www.scientificlinux.org/distributions/roadmap http://www.scientificlinux.org/distributions/roadmap) and have a security policy in place (http://www.scientificlinux.org/documentation/faq/errata 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.
- sciurus 15y ago
  For web hosting Debian and CentOS appear to dominate. http://w3techs.com/technologies/history_details/os-linux http://w3techs.com/technologies/history_details/os-linux
- ghshephard 15y ago
  Previous thread where I heard about Scientific Linux (And our discussion about it vs CentOS)
- ra 15y ago
  I like Debian for my servers, but for my desktop / laptop I use Crunchbang, which is a Debian based Openbox distro.
grannyg00se 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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.
- hobin 15y ago
  I quite agree. The article seems to say something along the lines of "It's Red Hat! But it's not Red Hat!" I really don't see what's so great about this distro (having used it myself once). If it works for the people at CERN, that's fine of course. However, I think there's little reason to call SL a 'great distro'.
javert 15y ago
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 15y ago
  RHEL is expensive.
  - javert 15y ago
    That's not much of an answer, given that there are dozens of free distros already, any of which would appear suitable.
    - streptomycin 15y ago
      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.
      - CPlatypus 15y ago
        What about Fedora? It's hardly a "random free distro" but it is free, and it has that same yum-my RHEL flavor. ;) Or is there something even more specific to RHEL that not even Fedora has? Even if I weren't a Red Hat associate, I'd be curious to know what that is.
      - javert 15y ago
        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.
secure 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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.
pjmlp 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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 15y ago
      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. :-(
allanscu 15y ago
I recall that Meebo was debating on switching over to Scientific Linux - http://blog.meebo.com/?p=3213 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

85 points by taylorbuley 15y ago

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.

ghshephard 15y ago

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 15y ago
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 http://www.scientificlinux.org/about/credit), publish a clear roadmap (http://www.scientificlinux.org/distributions/roadmap http://www.scientificlinux.org/distributions/roadmap) and have a security policy in place (http://www.scientificlinux.org/documentation/faq/errata 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.
sciurus 15y ago
For web hosting Debian and CentOS appear to dominate. http://w3techs.com/technologies/history_details/os-linux http://w3techs.com/technologies/history_details/os-linux
ghshephard 15y ago
Previous thread where I heard about Scientific Linux (And our discussion about it vs CentOS)
ra 15y ago
I like Debian for my servers, but for my desktop / laptop I use Crunchbang, which is a Debian based Openbox distro.

grannyg00se 15y ago

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 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago

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 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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.
hobin 15y ago
I quite agree. The article seems to say something along the lines of "It's Red Hat! But it's not Red Hat!" I really don't see what's so great about this distro (having used it myself once). If it works for the people at CERN, that's fine of course. However, I think there's little reason to call SL a 'great distro'.

javert 15y ago

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 15y ago
RHEL is expensive.
- javert 15y ago
  That's not much of an answer, given that there are dozens of free distros already, any of which would appear suitable.
  - streptomycin 15y ago
    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.
    - CPlatypus 15y ago
      What about Fedora? It's hardly a "random free distro" but it is free, and it has that same yum-my RHEL flavor. ;) Or is there something even more specific to RHEL that not even Fedora has? Even if I weren't a Red Hat associate, I'd be curious to know what that is.
    - javert 15y ago
      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.

secure 15y ago

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 15y ago
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.

pjmlp 15y ago

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 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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. :-(

allanscu 15y ago

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