On 05/14/2011 10:00 PM, jdow wrote:
>
> Well, curriegrad, there are a few people who tend to infest Linux
> distro lists that are fortunately not present here. They are
> "beginners determined to stay beginners and are obnoxious about it."
>
> Then there are the email format gurus who know there is one best way
> to do things. That's missing here. The goal is making something work.
> Now THAT is something technical people, scientists and to a lesser
> degree technical science students feature in large measure. From
> OUR standpoint that's the way it should be. For us that's the right
> way. That doesn't seem to be the case on larger groups and lists.
> <sigh>
>

I have to agree with the sentiments in this thread.  I've been in the 
systems engineering business longer than I care to admit, and a Linux 
fan since its very early days (when it shipped on 11 floppy disks). 
I've used several distros over the years, and settled on CentOS as a 
stable and reliable derivative of RHEL.  Been using it for several years 
with no complaints.

However, the CentOS mailing list has become a noisy battleground for 
some folks, while other cooler heads try to keep things on track.

I "discovered" SL because I was in the unfortunate position of not being 
able to wait for CentOS-6 to build a large VM Host machine.  A couple of 
list members were kind enough to assist me thru a spot of trouble 
related to SCSI device enumeration and dropped partitions (which somehow 
sorted itself out ... a weird story).  The general tone of this list has 
been professional, courteous and helpful.

I may be off-base here, but is it possible that the majority of people 
attracted to something called "Scientific" are likely to be more 
analytical in their approach to problem solving?   Many of us (me 
included) tend to approach things with a laboratory/research mind set, 
one characteristic of which is a willingness to do our own research 
before asking questions.  This contributes to the sanity of this list.

Now I'm beginning to think I might migrate many of my current CentOS 
machines to SL as they come up for replacement or upgrade to v6.

Kudos to the SL team and to the list members.