On Tue, Feb 25, 2020 at 09:15:35AM -0500, Brett Viren wrote:
> 
> You might ask "why is there a HEP monoculture based on Red Hat?".  That
> would be an interesting story if someone knows the details. ...
> 
> 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.
>

That's right. I was at BNL at the time, it was right in front of my eyes.

The first guy installed RH linux. it worked. end of story.

This happened right after the first quad-PentiumPro machines became
available, with Dell dual-PentiumII/III to follow soon after.

These USD$2k desktop boxes had performance better than USD$250k SGI "mainframes",
they had 100Mbit ethernet (SGI did not), they plugged into 110V wall power (SGI
required 3 phase AC). so. end of SGI. SGI IRIX out, Linux in.

>
> 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.
> 

I am not sure what happened with Debian at that point. We certainly knew
about it, one of Debian founders worked with us. We also knew about Slackware.

It is hard to remember that far back, but I would say that Red Hat was probably
the better distribution at the time, having a business funded with startup
money behind it. Small things like the sadly missed tools "redhat-config-users",
"redhat-config-network", interactive installers, etc must have all added up somehow.

>
> 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.
>

At BNL, "management" only got involved in this by the time RHIC and LHC
experiments started looking at their computing needs. By that time
everybody already was running Red Hat Linux.

>
> 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.
> 

I think that's right. Certainly Red Hat sales and corporate people had
a presence (and Debian, lacking both, did not). Incoming hardware from IBM & co
all had "OS: Red Hat Linux" written in the specs (not "Debian"), etc.

>
> 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.  
> 

Yes, intersting how that turned out.

-- 
Konstantin Olchanski
Data Acquisition Systems: The Bytes Must Flow!
Email: olchansk-at-triumf-dot-ca
Snail mail: 4004 Wesbrook Mall, TRIUMF, Vancouver, B.C., V6T 2A3, Canada