Hello all.

Just investigating for the future: or shall we (we = all
of us using SL(X) go Scientific Linux 5 .. or maybe re-base
to CentOS 5 ?

From what I can personally see, and looking at past years
I believe we are seriously missing resources necessary
to develop SL to become something more than a Red Hat
'clone' ... all of 4-5 (sorry if I missed some!)
people contributing are obviously overloaded with their
other work in the labs ...

The only added value of SL (comparing to CentOS) as
I see it now is:

1). Adding to anaconda the 'sites' functionality
2). Adding AFS client (plus few more packages).

(well, there are few more customizations but these are
minor I would say)

I believe that above could be addressed by a different
solution in the future: RHEL 5 anaconda should be able
to use (during installation) additional
yum repositories (therefore packages we put in 'site'
could come from there..) :

- we could possibly use that mechanism in order to
  build our own 'branches': Fermi, CERN, DESY .. etc ..

Additional packages (not already present elsewhere)
could be submitted to CentOS contrib / centosplus
repos (if general purpose) ... or a new addon
CentOS repository.

Adopting the above would permit us to spend more
time on something which was supposed to be one
of our main goals ... and what is not really
achieved: adding 'scientific' packages to the
distribution...

What is you opinion about re-basing on CentOS ?

Pros ? Cons ?

Let me start the list:

- Pros:

    - Avoiding duplicating what already has been
      provided by linux community.

    - Joining 'forces' with others having very similar goal
      (free linux with long livetime 100% RHEL compatible)

    - Having more time for development of parts
      of distribution really related to 'science'.
      (or other areas used developed in our labs:
       cluster management, HSM, managed desktops ... etc.)

    - Much larger 'userbase' (see mailing lists !)

    - Much larger 'expertbase' for community support.

    - Lots of personal time of some of us saved
      (all these alpha/beta/rc releases
       ... plus tests ... )
      [well: I don't know how it is in your labs: but we
      at CERN cannot spend more than 20%-25% of FTE (Full
      Time Equivalent) on linux distribution preparation ..]

- Cons:

    - ?


Please reply to the list what are your opinions about
the above:

    - I believe that it is right time to discuss such
      possibility:

      RHEL 5/CentOS 5/SL 5 are not out yet and I believe
      there will be no urgency to deploy it in our labs
      anytime soon (certainly not at CERN: we are just
      migrating to 4: we will not be permitted to
      go forward during LHC startup and also most likely
      not in 2008 ..)


Cheers

Jarek (frequently overloaded SLC maintainer ;-))

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