Scientific Linux 6/7 Will Remain Supported But The Distribution Is Ending

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Scientific Linux 6/7 Will Remain Supported But The Distribution Is Ending

For those wanting a community-supported, free version in effect of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the two options have been CentOS with its close relation (and employment) by Red Hat or Scientific Linux that has been maintained Fermilab, CERN, and other research labs. Moving forward, however, these labs are going to be adopting CentOS 8 and they will not be developing a new version of Scientific Linux based on the upcoming RHEL8...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Scientific-Linux-EOL

[tuxd3v]

Its very Sad,
To see CERN each time more dependent on RedHat or IBM now..
With Devuan, void Linux, Suse Linux,Ubuntu and others around.. its dependence on RedHat its a strategical problem..

[szymon_g]

will they at least provide us with the repos with important (for some) applications (like: fierefox or libreoffice) will be provided in modern(-ish) versions? Centos's software is way too obsolete on the day of the centos release.

[Britoid]

Its very Sad,
To see CERN each time more dependent on RedHat or IBM now..
With Devuan, void Linux, Suse Linux,Ubuntu and others around.. its dependence on RedHat its a strategical problem..

Debianxfce is that you?

[anarki2]

Its very Sad,
To see CERN each time more dependent on RedHat or IBM now..
With Devuan, void Linux, Suse Linux,Ubuntu and others around.. its dependence on RedHat its a strategical problem..

Oh yeah, coz by compiling the Red Hat sources on their own they weren't depending on Red Hat, right.

Coz compiling the same sources TWICE is so useful. Instead of spending time on activities that are actually useful, let's just duplicate all efforts, all the time.

Or something. It's so saaad :cry

[anarki2]

will they at least provide us with the repos with important (for some) applications (like: fierefox or libreoffice) will be provided in modern(-ish) versions? Centos's software is way too obsolete on the day of the centos release.

I'm not sure what repos you're talking about. The official Scientific repo has the same versions as RHEL/CentOS. Actually, no, they're somewhat older.

If your main need is up-to-date desktop software, EL (RHEL, Scientific, CentOS) should be your last choice. Fedora is much more fit for this kind of usage.

[wizard69]

Its very Sad,
To see CERN each time more dependent on RedHat or IBM now..
With Devuan, void Linux, Suse Linux,Ubuntu and others around.. its dependence on RedHat its a strategical problem..

Huh? They are not anymore dependent upon IBM or Redhat than before. If anything this should free up a lot of talent at CERN to focus on their unique and often open software solutions. This is a good thing from my perspective as much of the code written at CERN runs on multiple platforms.

[wizard69]

I suspect that the whole point is to grab a stable version. As much as I like Fedora, running it right now on my laptop, it isn’t exactly the most stable of platforms. People seem to forget that there is a need for large projects to have systems running on known good software. Further if the software does have bugs that they are well documented.

Frankly I never understood the need for Scientific Linux. It always struck me as a let’s make work project to justify head count. This isn’t uncommon when it comes to government programs. In the end we can hope that the talent freed up here might actually work on something beyond a me too project.

I'm not sure what repos you're talking about. The official Scientific repo has the same versions as RHEL/CentOS. Actually, no, they're somewhat older.

If your main need is up-to-date desktop software, EL (RHEL, Scientific, CentOS) should be your last choice. Fedora is much more fit for this kind of usage.

[the_scx]

Its very Sad,
To see CERN each time more dependent on RedHat or IBM now..
With Devuan, void Linux, Suse Linux,Ubuntu and others around.. its dependence on RedHat its a strategical problem..

They were always dependent on Red Hat. Scientific Linux is de facto a RHEL clone. It has almost the same packages, just recompiled from SRPMS. Differences are extremely rare, just like in CentOS.
https://wiki.centos.org/Manuals/Rele...42a6d70dea3b10
Scientific Linux 6 had some advantage over CentOS 6, because it had smaller publication delay. Moreover, there were a few useful additional packages in the SL6 extra repo, such as yum-autoupdate.
Everything has changed with the arrival of EL7 and the creation of CentOS SIGs (Special Interest Groups).

https://www.centos.org/about/governance/sigs/

Scientific Linux lost its meaning, so it's no surprise that CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) withdrew it.
To be honest, I was surprised that Fermilab (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory) decided to continue working on the SL7 on his own.

will they at least provide us with the repos with important (for some) applications (like: fierefox or libreoffice) will be provided in modern(-ish) versions? Centos's software is way too obsolete on the day of the centos release.

How the latest ESR version of Firefox can be obsoleted?
Many packages are updated with each minor release (7.0 → 7.1 → 7.2 → 7.3 → 7.4 → 7.5 → 7.6). This applies to X.Org (1.15 → 1.17 → 1.19 → 1.20), Gtk+3 (3.8 → 3.14 → 3.22), GNOME (3.8 → 3.14 → 3.22 → 3.28), Qt5 (5.6 → 5.9), KDE KF (5.36 → 5.52), WebKit (libwebkit2gtk → webkitgtk3 → webkitgtk4), LibreOffice (4.1 → 4.2 → 4.3 → 5.0 → 5.3), Firefox (24 → 31 → 38 → 45 → 52 → 60) and many, many others. Moreover, you have plenty of updates in EPEL (e.g. Mono 2.10 → 4.6, Python 3.4 → 3.6) and bunch of software in SCLs (Software Collections), although these programs are generally intended to use without GUI (e.g. nodejs, python, ruby, php, etc.).
Finally, you can use Flatpak/Snap/AppImage packages as well.

[tuxd3v]

I suspect that the whole point is to grab a stable version. As much as I like Fedora, running it right now on my laptop, it isn’t exactly the most stable of platforms. People seem to forget that there is a need for large projects to have systems running on known good software. Further if the software does have bugs that they are well documented.

Frankly I never understood the need for Scientific Linux. It always struck me as a let’s make work project to justify head count. This isn’t uncommon when it comes to government programs. In the end we can hope that the talent freed up here might actually work on something beyond a me too project.

Scientific Linux, came with a idea of independence, with time..
With all people involved, been a stronghold capable to maintain a distribution on CERN, in a independent way, without any companies ideas, and strategies involved..

That independence is over now..
So its sad, exactly because of that..