"Peter Willis" <[log in to unmask]> writes:

> Perhaps, if it’s not too much trouble, people on the list might give a short blurb about
> how they use it and why.

SL (and soon changing to Centos) provides a monoculture in HEP computing
so there is no choice for me but to consider it.

I use Debian-based distributions where I have a choice.

To satisfy both of my constraints, I restrict my personal use of SL to
environments provided by Linux containers.  This way, I can assure my
software works for the monoculture while allowing me to stay in my
preferred environment for the majority of my activities.


Warning: wool gathering:

You might ask "why is there a HEP monoculture based on Red Hat?".  That
would be an interesting story if someone knows the details.  My guess is
that it is due to one or two (or both) dynamics:

I suspect the actions of a small number of early movers led to RH's
dominance in HEP.  I can point a finger at a few from FNAL and BNL.
Debian and RH started at the same time (1993) so my guess is these early
movers just happened to be more exposed to RH and less to Debian.  The
network effect then did its thing.

The second, maybe coupled, dynamic is that (I suspect) there was a
seduction by the corporate backing of RH of HEP lab management.  Or,
maybe a "comfort" is a less loaded term.  Sure, the BSDs were a
pre-existing counter narrative, but what I saw dominating in mid 90s HEP
was SGI's Irix, DEC's Pure64, Sun's SunOS/Solaris.  In that environment,
I think it natural that management types would cozy up to arguments
like: "RH is corporate, just like Sun, but cheaper" compared to Debian's
scary form of *gasp* self-organization.

Of course, and maybe only in hindsight, we know Debian's organization is
more robust an entity than RH's ended up being.  Ironically, Debian also
contains far far more science-related packages than the distribution
with "science" in its name.  


Anyways, now back to work.

-Brett.