CentOS - Nov 2011 - CentOS versus Scientific

Hey folks,

I was just reminded of the Scientific distro, which on the surface
appears to be quite similar to CentOS even when the developers over
there are rather coy about which Enterprise Linux distro they base
theirs on.

I wonder if anyone here has done a comparison of the two that they'd
care to share.

I work in a Scientific Research Lab (Stem Cell Research) and am
wondering if there is anything about the Scientific disto that might
be better suited to our needs, even if it is only the fact that it is
put together by people who work in similar environments and would
therefore understand our needs better.

I'm just starting to read up on it to see what I think and thought I
would ask what others think.

One thing I will have to look into of course is what kind of support
there is - this list is absolutely fantastic for CentOS and that alone
is worth a lot.

cheers,
-Alan


-- 
?Don't eat anything you've ever seen advertised on TV?
? ? ? ?? - Michael Pollan, author of "In Defense of Food"

On 14 November 2011 20:31, Alan McKay <alan.mckay at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Hey folks,
>
> I was just reminded of the Scientific distro, which on the surface
> appears to be quite similar to CentOS even when the developers over
> there are rather coy about which Enterprise Linux distro they base
> theirs on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Linux

It is an other repackaging of the Upstream, with different goals in mind.

On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 2:31 PM, Alan McKay <alan.mckay at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> I was just reminded of the Scientific distro, which on the surface
> appears to be quite similar to CentOS even when the developers over
> there are rather coy about which Enterprise Linux distro they base
> theirs on.
>
> I wonder if anyone here has done a comparison of the two that they'd
> care to share.
>
> I work in a Scientific Research Lab (Stem Cell Research) and am
> wondering if there is anything about the Scientific disto that might
> be better suited to our needs, even if it is only the fact that it is
> put together by people who work in similar environments and would
> therefore understand our needs better.
>
> I'm just starting to read up on it to see what I think and thought I
> would ask what others think.
>
> One thing I will have to look into of course is what kind of support
> there is - this list is absolutely fantastic for CentOS and that alone
> is worth a lot.
CentOS attempts to be strictly/religiously compatible with upstream
except for merging the workstation/server variations - to the point
that it is supposed to be easy to buy a support contract and flip to
RHEL for updates.  SL makes some changes on purpose:
http://www.scientificlinux.org/about/customize and makes strict
compatibility less of a priority.  But it is still a rebuild from the
same sources and I would doubt that you'd see any practical difference
in running any particular application under them.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com

Le 14/11/2011 21:31, Alan McKay a ?crit :
> Hey folks,
>
> I was just reminded of the Scientific distro, which on the surface
> appears to be quite similar to CentOS even when the developers over
> there are rather coy about which Enterprise Linux distro they base
> theirs on.
>
> I wonder if anyone here has done a comparison of the two that they'd
> care to share.
>
> I work in a Scientific Research Lab (Stem Cell Research) and am
> wondering if there is anything about the Scientific disto that might
> be better suited to our needs, even if it is only the fact that it is
> put together by people who work in similar environments and would
> therefore understand our needs better.
>
> I'm just starting to read up on it to see what I think and thought I
> would ask what others think.
>
> One thing I will have to look into of course is what kind of support
> there is - this list is absolutely fantastic for CentOS and that alone
> is worth a lot.
>
> cheers,
> -Alan
>
>
Hi Alan,

One difference is that SL 6.1 has been releasd on July, 28. See :
http://www.scientificlinux.org/distributions/6x/rnotes/sl-release-notes-6.1.html

The distrib is supported by Fermilab and CERN, and is in fact a rebuild 
of RHEL with very few elements added. Some which were added previously 
(Root...) are now in EPEL repository.

There are at least two paid developpers to incure for releases and 
updates, which are said to be released "within a couple of days" :
http://www.scientificlinux.org/documentation/faq/errata

Alain