Dear All,

I have peoblems with the development model for Scientific Linux.

It is unclear where to report bugs:
 	* To Scientific Linux ?
 	* To RedHat ?
 	* To Fedora ?

The route to get new packages into SL is also unclear:
 	* direct to SL ?
 	* request via RedHat ?
 	* request via Fedora and hope RedHat picks the changes/packages up?

OK so Jaroslaw has identified that the main benifit of SL is its additions 
to anaconda to have multiple "sites"[*]. The thing is that unless this can 
be integrated into anaconda upstream then we will always have to maintain 
this code.

I can see your argument for baseing off CentOS but then you make my two 
isses above even less clear:
   Fedora->RedHat->CentOS->SL

If the suits are happy to base of CentOS as an external community provider 
why not Fedora?
This would make the issue of getting SL changes into the core a lot 
easier.

Now I have problems with using Fedora as an "Enterprise" distribution... 
mostly because of the frequent release schedule...

So now I'm going to make myself unpopular...
What about a Debian derived Scientific Linux distribution?
Debian has already got many sub-projects providing Custom Debian 
Dsitributions (CDD) and has and continues to develop 
the infrastucture to have customised installers for these CDD's.
   http://wiki.debian.org/CustomDebian

There are precedents for changing from an RPM to DEB based distro:
   http://envgen.nox.ac.uk/biolinux.html

There is a clear way for changes to be made to the core distribution and 
there is infrastructure to allow an SL repo both suplement and/or override 
what is in the core.

We can be sure of the policy of the debian project as it is a mature 
project and the policy is published on the web site.

It is interesting to see that Fedora seems to be adopting many of the same 
ideas as Debian. Fedora packaging guidelines vs Debian-policy. Integration 
of Fedora Extras into Fedora... making a large repo like debian. Fedora 
are getting more strict on Licencing issues too it seems from where I 
stand.

Oh well I guess that will go down like a lead Balloon but while I'm 
typing...

We should of course be lobying 3rd party software providers to provide LSB 
compliant packages. This gives us more choice over Linux Distro to 
choose.

Hmmm and of course Ubuntu is debian derived and seems to be going from 
strength to strength.

Anyway enough of my chat...!

Alex Owen

[*]
I'm not all that keen on the multiple site thing anyhow. I don't see why a 
site cannot install the core then keep a repo of it's own divergent 
packages. Oh anaconda... !


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Dr Richard Alexander Owen	           Physicist/Programmer

Queen Mary, University of London      Tel: 0207 882 5054
Physics Department		    Email: [log in to unmask]
Mile End Road
London E1 4NS, UK
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