Hello,
We had a very good Plenary Discussion this Hepix, and I think we got 
alot accomplished.  I believe this is a summary.  Correct me if I am wrong.

** Lifetime of Scientific Linux 4
  - October 2010
  -- This is the same as SL 3.  This should prompt users to not just 
update from SL3 to SL4, but to the latest release, like SL5 or SL6

** Put XFS into the main Scientific Linux distribution
  - SL5 - yes
  - SL4 - no ... leave it in contrib
   -- SL4 is rather old and now isn't the time to be adding major new 
features to it.
  - For SL 5.2, it will just be in the distribution, similar to openafs. 
  If people find that they want to be able to format with XFS during the 
install, we might look into that for SL 5.3, but no promises.

** Scientific Linux 6 - Should we use CentOS rpm's?
  - We should give it a try
  - We would still make our installer changes.
  - We would still modify the rpm's we usually modify.
  - We would still add the packages we usually add.
  - We would still keep our identity.  We would not be just a CentOS 
repository.
  -- Concern: There is a concern that we wouldn't be able to do our 
usual alpha, and beta releases because it's harder to get CentOS's 
compiled rpm's until they actually completely release them.
  - We aren't fully committing to this, but we are going to give it an 
honest effort.  If, for some unseen reason, we find things aren't 
working, we will go back to what we do for past releases.

** kernel modules
  - dkms
   -- although nobody had objects to the program dkms being in the 
release, most people felt that the dkms kernel modules should stay in 
the contrib area.  They want a "precompiled" kernel module solution.
  - kmod (what RHEL 5 and centos is doing) - It is becoming more secure, 
more bugs worked out.  Probrubly for SL6, especially if we use centos's 
rpms.  But we didn't see this benefiting us on SL5 enough to be worth 
the effort of changing.

** Xen in RHEL Update 2
  - Question was what will really be there
  - Answer was that we don't know.  What they keep documenting in 
release notes and beta announcments, is not what is actually put in the 
release.

** Updating Firefox, thunderbird, and openoffice
  - We know of the current problems and crashes.  Trust us, we know.
  - We (the SL development team) will not put in a newer firefox and 
thunderbird
   -- We have done this before, and know the pain
   -- Redhat is already working on updating to firefox 3, thunderbird 2, 
openoffice 2.? (something higher)
   -- Please be patient, it should only be a couple months for the real 
fixes to come out.

**Ubuntu Creep
  - We ran out of time for this.

Troy

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Troy Dawson  [log in to unmask]  (630)840-6468
Fermilab  ComputingDivision/CSS  CSI Group
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