This certainly an interesting issue, but I have

been less pleased with SL than Keith is. The main

problems have come with software that is not in

SL's standard set, generally because SL does not

have the needed libraries or supporting packages.



For example I cannot currently use Dropbox under SL

although I have manually re-partitioned and re-formatted

to use ext4 rather than xfs, since Dropbox insists on ext4.

The error message tells me I do not have glibc 2.19, and

advises I should update to Ubuntu 14.04+ or Fedora 21+



Often there's a workaround using other repos' contents

to get necessary libraries etc., but when I look for info

on the net the available advice is, like that above, most

often for Ubuntu and secondly a recent Fedora.



An example of software I would like to use is an up-to-date

gramps, while examples of things I do use but which are not

in the standard SL distribution are Texlive 2018

(SL's distributed texlive seems quite old) and MATE (from

epel, which works but with some flaky bits, notably the

power-manager and the keyboard configuration)



Malcolm



On 05/01/2019 23:43, Keith Lofstrom wrote:

> I do not expect an RHEL/CentOS cancellation in my

> lifetime.  I expect IBM will keep them thriving

> and available for a very long time.

> 

> However, big companies can do stupid things, and

> cancelling RHEL, or ending "free" CentOS, is

> something a clueless IBM CEO might attempt someday.

> 

> I am designing systems that others will maintain and

> upgrade for decades.  A reluctant switchover to, say,

> Debian is easier to manage now than later.  I hope

> that will NEVER be necessary.  Debian could be

> mismanaged as well; this happened with X and Gnome.

> 

> I rely on Scientific Linux and variants because large

> organizations like Fermilabs and CERN and LIGO do.

> I hope these organizations have contingency plans.

> 

> I assume that if IBM behaves badly in the future, our

> international community will grumble, plead, and then

> fork, keeping systems like RPM and yum functional for

> approximately forever.

> 

> Is this a prudent assumption?

> 

> Keith

>