Hi Bonnie, Dave, et. al.

I am a long time Fedora person and now the community manager of AlmaLinux.

We certainly understand the quandary you are now in and we deeply value the work that you and the scientific (both capital S and lower-case) community do. It is of utmost importance to humanity. Likewise, we can only begin to image the loop that the CentOS EOL announcement must have caused you.

We are ready, willing and able to help. We released our x86_64 STABLE a drop over a month ago and are working on other architectures now. We are also in the process of opening up our-next generation build system, amongst other things.

I extend a hand to the Scientific community-at-large to work together with you all to build whatever it is that you need. We are even open to offering a board seat (yes despite what FUD people try and spread, we are community-governed) to someone from fermilab/cern (or some other representative) to ensure that the relevant voices are heard and acted upon.

I’m reaching out to you out of my own volition, because I respect you and the work you do and its vital impact in the humanity both present and future.

Seriously, anything we can do for you guys, any way we can help in order to promote and foster scientific research, we stand at the fore ready to get it done.

I am sure there may be questions and I would be glad to answer anything anyone would like to know more about.

Thanks
Jack

> On May 3, 2021, at 07:25, Bonnie King <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> Hi Konstantin,
> 
> There hasn't been any official statement. On the Fermilab side we are holding discussions and gathering feedback from experiments and other collaborators.
> 
> We are working on it and will make an announcement soon.
> 
> Bonnie King
> 
> ________________________________________
> From: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Konstantin Olchanski <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Saturday, May 1, 2021 9:27 AM
> To: Dave Dykstra
> Cc: scientific-linux-users
> Subject: Re: any update on CERN Linux and CentOS-8 situation?
> 
> On Fri, Apr 30, 2021 at 09:35:02PM +0000, Dave Dykstra wrote:
>> Both Fermilab and CERN have stated that they plan to use CentOS 8 stream
>> for now (or Scientific Linux 7 or CentOS 7) and will evaluate later
>> whether or not to switch to one of the clones.
> 
> Interesting. I do not see any information about this and I believe
> I receive both internal and external official communications from CERN.
> 
> Do you know who and when made this "centos stream" statement?
> 
> K.O.
> 
> 
>> 
>> Dave
>> 
>> On Fri, Apr 30, 2021 at 10:35:18AM -0700, Konstantin Olchanski wrote:
>>> Any news or updates on the status of CERN Linux?
>>> 
>>> Per https://linux.web.cern.ch/centos8/ CERN users are strongly encouraged
>>> to use CentOS-8 while the same page states that support for CentOS-8 will
>>> end at the end of this year. Update is promised "during Q1 2021", today
>>> we are 1/3 into Q2 2021, and there is no new information.
>>> 
>>> The CentOS forums are graveyard quiet. (censored?)
>>> 
>>> Any information from the FermiLab side of things? Any information from the SL side
>>> of things? Any rumours?
>>> 
>>> I opened a support ticket with CERN about this, let's see what they say.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> 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
> 
> --
> 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