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.

Scientific Linux has now been effectively made end-of-life. Fermilab and other parties involved will continue supporting Scientific Linux 6 and Scientific Linux 7 based on RHEL6 and RHEL7, respectively, but moving forward they themselves are switching over to CentOS.

They announced the decision today on scientific-linux-announce that in cooperation with CERN and other labs will be working on upstream CentOS as opposed to developing Scientific Linux 8.

Scientific Linux had been around since 2004 with version 3.0.1 based on the Red Hat sources of the time. This isn't too surprising as CERN had already been migrating away from Scientific Linux to CentOS in recent years while Fermilab continued as its primary sponsor. Scientific Linux had also continued seeing significant delays before pushing out new releases following upstream RHEL point releases.