It is odd that you have no budget to support critical systems for your
department,  Yasha.

What if you power servers down and see how "critical " they indeed are? And
if they are not - then get fedora and be done with it.


On Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 14:46 ONeal, Miles <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> SL didn't have "support", but the mailing list provided excellent,
> real-world support. At least during the SL 3-5 timeframe, CentOS had
> nothing even close that I could find.
>
> There's obvious value in the broader community involvement that comes
> through CentOS, and in providing a free alternative for those who don't
> need / can't afford RH licensing. Wiping out CentOS would hurt the
> ecosystem. That doesn't mean it can't happen, but it seems unlikely.
>
> One company I worked for never bought RHEL because it would have been too
> pricey under the circumstances. We found a cou0ple of bugs that got
> reported back upstream. Another company I worked for moved to RHEL from
> CentOS as soon as it could afford to, because we needed the support. Both
> companies made the right decision for their situation, and both were good
> for RedHat, just in different ways.
>
> RedHat has been fine with CentOS and SL. I see no reason for that to
> change. IBM is not micro-managing RedHat. Hopefully that won't change,
> either.
>
> -Miles
> ------------------------------
> *From:* [log in to unmask] <
> [log in to unmask]> on behalf of Yasha Karant
> <[log in to unmask]>
> *Sent:* Friday, February 21, 2020 13:21
> *To:* [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
> *Subject:* Re: Is Scientfic Linux Still Active as a Distribution?
>
> Caution: EXTERNAL email
>
>
> As we could not afford the license-for-fee model that RedHat started a
> number of years ago (prior to which, one could download and install
> production RedHat -- not the "Fedora" equivalent -- licensed for free but
> without RedHat support -- but updates, etc., were available without fee),
> we too went with CentOS.  Before RH, I used Debian, but there were issues
> of stability.  RH was stable.  The problem with CentOS was that it was more
> or less a volunteer deployment, and we did not have the personnel to join
> the effort as our internal and external funding could not be used for that
> purpose.  Once SL became a more-or-less "stock" version of RHEL, and given
> that SL had professional funded employed personnel (as required by HEP and
> funded by the various governments that support Fermilab or CERN), this was
> the logical choice.  SL came with no support, but as several of us (myself
> included) were at one epoch "kernels internals" persons, and were "systems
> persons", and not as "IT" but as scientists and engineers, with the SL
> users list for "help", we had no significant issues -- see the recent
> exchange concerning a bug in EPEL that prevented an "easy" upgrade of the
> MATE desktop GUI environment.
>
> However, RedHat is now owned by IBM, and CentOS is the RedHat "licensed
> for free" distro front end.   The only reason IBM exists is not to support
> the goals of the Freesoftware Foundation (GPL), but to support profit -- it
> is a major for-profit (effectively, trans-national) corporation.  Thus, one
> cannot rely upon entities within such a corporation to do anything that
> will undermine or reduce the profits of the corporation (including the
> overall compensation package of the CEO and the like), except in those
> nation states that have enforced regulations controlling the product
> deployments.  The USA has very little compared to much of the EU.  As
> Fermilab/CERN do not exist for the same purpose as IBM (individual
> scientists who may be the group leaders, etc., at such entities
> notwithstanding), SL was a viable alternative.  There is absolutely no
> reason to assume that IBM will be such an alternative unless one wants to
> pay.  I am not going to argue with those who claim we are "freeloaders"
> despite paying the taxes that in part support Fermilab and CERN, but not
> CentOS -- if we cannot pay, we should not use -- but the realities of much
> university-based academic research is that there is no money and we do what
> we can.
>
> In the simplest terms. I trust IBM to maximize overall
> return-on-investment (e.g., profit), and a "free" CentOS that truly
> competes with licensed-for-fee products does not fit that for-profit model.
>
> Yasha Karant
>
> On 2/21/20 7:41 AM, Michel Jouvin wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm surprised by the so negative feeling against CentOS which is a great
> project too and has been working well since it was "acquired" by Red Hat. I
> see no official sign that it should change. Moving from SL to CentOS is
> straightforward, I don't think you can speak about it as a migration as it
> is exactly the same product. And staying with CentOS will give you a chance
> to meet the DUNE people at some point and more generally the HEP community
> if you liked interacting with it!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Michel
> Le 21/02/2020 à 16:32, Peter Willis a écrit :
>
> Hello,
>
>
> Thanks to everyone for clarifying the future status of SL.
>
> I guess it’s time to start researching he docs for Ubuntu/Debian or
> something.
>
>
>
> Looks like we need to revise our computing cluster plan.
>
> The computer here is pretty small with only two nodes and a controller
> totalling 112 CPUs.
>
> We use it for numerical modelling of ocean and river currents and sediment
> transport (OpenMP/MPICH/FORTRAN).
>
> The changeover will be pretty small. We are still waiting for the OK for
> a new node or two.
>
> The current nodes are ten years old. The update to a controller and SL7
> was a last ditch effort to join the two nodes and increase the scale of
> the models without costing too much more.
>
>
>
> In other news, the link you shared has an article about ‘DUNE’ which seems
> like an interesting project.
>
> I’d certainly frostbite a few toes to just stand around and watch that
> thing run experiments.
>
>
>
> Thanks for the info,
>
>
>
> Peter
>
>
>
>
>
> >Hello Peter,
>
> >
>
> >> Is Scientific Linux still active?
>
> >Scientific Linux 6 and 7 will be supported until they are EOL, but there
> will be no SL8.
>
> >
>
> >Here is the official announcement from last April:
>
> >
>
> >
> https://listserv.fnal.gov/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind1904&L=SCIENTIFIC-LINUX-USERS&P=817
> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__listserv.fnal.gov_scripts_wa.exe-3FA2-3Dind1904-26L-3DSCIENTIFIC-2DLINUX-2DUSERS-26P-3D817&d=DwMF-g&c=B_W-eXUX249zycySS1AyzjABMeYirU1wvo9-GmMObjY&r=Z7xHp2tIJsvAE2FtPxl_lynvf4hA_FJ8mKsaIgvY6Dk&m=1zP0LygxDwV3-fUs-jcM2DUCZNrhuLf05Y7PBpNbezA&s=Mp_eieQpDG0QyCOHMRj4c9vZVvy8-Wu-IgGpxnevSCI&e=>
>
> >
>
> >Bonnie King
>
>
>