Thank you for quoting from the Princeton material.  I had read the 
Princeton commentary a while ago when internally we were debating SL vs. 
Princeton, and went with SL because Fermilab/CERN combined have better 
resources than Princeton alone.  The one thing I did note and have 
mentioned on this list, if memory serves, was that SL8 was to be 
replaced by (the now to-be-defunct) CentOS 8, for which the comment that 
such RPMs (including presumably SRPMs) are "not 100% safe" seemed 
applicable.  However, there was no substantial discussion of this point; 
thus I assumed that as Fermilab/CERN did have a very limited deployment 
RHEL license, the HEP community CentOS 8 would be verified against 
"safe" RHEL for not just binary compatibility ("bug for bug") but also 
"safety".

As pointed out by others on this list, I too need later C++ versions 
than EL 7 has -- any idea when Springdale EL8 will be in production 
distribution with a distro?

On 12/14/20 12:10 PM, Maarten wrote:
> Spring is a binary clone of RHEL and the sources are not based off CentOS.
> 
> Quoting someone from the  Springdale mailinglist:  "Springdale Linux 
> formerly known as PUIAS (Princeton University Institute for Advanced 
> Studies) is older than CentOS and it compiles it's own binaries from the 
> upstream source code. It is unrelated to CentOS and in my experience 
> CentOS RPMs are not 100% safe. I tend to avoid them. Springdale has it's 
> own repos, EPEL is ok and RPM Fusion works for me. For CUDA I use RHEL 
> RPMs not CentOS RPMs the same goes for Chrome or anything else."
> 
> If you want to install Springdale you can just use the boot iso no DVD 
> needed: puias.princeton.edu/data/puias/8.3/x86_64/os/images/boot.iso
> 
> As for converting from CentOS8 to Springdale it's basically removing the 
> the Centos specific packages and replacing them with the Springdale 
> packages. I have done this with a test system and afterwards with my 
> personal systems that were running CentOS8. it worked flawlessly so I 
> will be sticking to Springdale Linux even after Rocky Linux  is released.
> 
> Maarten
> 
> On 12/14/20 8:49 PM, Yasha Karant wrote:
>> Springdale EL (Princeton in my terminology, just as SL is 
>> Fermilab/CERN) shows the following:
>>
>> Download
>> DVD
>>
>> i386    x86_64
>> 8.3    TBA    TBA
>>
>> That is, there is no repo with an installable EL 8 ISO image.  As for 
>> repos, Springdale shows:
>>
>> If you are only looking to install some rpms, you can download our 
>> repositories on your system.
>>
>> YUM Repositories for PUIAS 8?  (NB:  This text was thus shown as not 
>> [yet?] available.
>>
>> If Sprindale is built from CentOS, then such a build will no longer be 
>> possible from CentOS Stream (a perpetual "beta" version, not a 
>> production distro).  Springdale (and Rocky EL) and any future SL 8 -- 
>> were the HEP community to fund such (personnel, space, and hardware 
>> platforms) -- would need to get actual production RHEL 8 source from 
>> IBM RH pursuant to the Linux, GPL, etc., licenses.  Such sources are 
>> not "pretty" and are deliberately designed to be "unfriendly" to build 
>> from source, even with removal of all of the proprietary "logo" IP. 
>> The idea of keeping SL 7 "alive" with perpetual backporting also may 
>> not be attractive.  For now, until IBM RH announces for CentOS 7 what 
>> was announced for the to-be-defunct CentOS 8, CentOS 7 can keep SL 7 
>> patched for security, albeit not necessarily for new hardware (e.g., 
>> backporting drivers) or supporting new CPU and system I/O architectures.
>>
>> Yasha Karant
>>
>> On 12/14/20 3:39 AM, Maarten wrote:
>>> I already converted over my personal systems over to Springdale Linux 
>>> without having to reinstall because it saved me from having to 
>>> reinstall Debian from scratch on all of my systems.
>>>
>>> On 12/14/20 12:37 PM, Tapia, Ron wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> Is anyone considering Springdale Linux 
>>>> (https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__springdale.math.ias.edu_&d=DwIFAw&c=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA&r=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A&m=fXPV3dpZLhNbng7dmn_Ujhzb4ZuEw1y-JygmhWnmWFc&s=X_cL7uUNfZJblixsdJpO5f8utO2X1cLdZWYLVmfwc-s&e= 
>>>> ) as a way forward after SL7?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>>
>>>> Ron
>>>>
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