Best wishes to Connie! She and the support provided by Fermilab truly changed scientific computing throughout the world. We are all very grateful! On 02/24/2017 03:52 PM, Bonnie King wrote: > Friends, > > The Scientific Linux team is at once happy and sad to announce Connie > Sieh's retirement after 23 years. Today is her last full-time day at > Fermilab. > > Connie Sieh founded the Fermi Linux and Scientific Linux projects and > has worked on them continuously. She has sometimes preferred to toil > behind the scenes and leave public announcements to others, but has > always been a driving force behind the projects. > > The Scientific Linux story started in the late 1990s when Connie's group > explored using commodity PC hardware and Linux as an alternative to > commercial servers with proprietary UNIX operating systems. From the > distributions available at the time, Red Hat Linux was chosen. > > In 1998, Connie announced Fermi Linux at HEPiX, a semi-annual meeting of > High Energy Physics IT staff. Fermi Linux was a customized and > re-branded version of Red Hat Linux with some tweaks for integration > with the Fermilab environment. It also introduced an installer > modification called Workgroups, a framework to customize package sets > for use at different sites and for different purposes. The Workgroups > concept lives on today in the form of Contexts for SL7. > > In October 2003 TUV changed their product model and introduced Red Hat > Enterprise Linux. Enterprise Linux was no longer freely distributed in > binary form, but sources remained available. > > Connie and her colleagues started building from these sources, creating > one of the first Enterprise Linux rebuilds. A preview, dubbed HEPL, was > presented at spring HEPiX 2004. In May 2004, the rebuild was released as > Scientific Linux. The name was chosen to reflect the goals and user base > of the product. > > Our colleagues at CERN collaborated, customizing and using Scientific > Linux as Scientific Linux CERN (SLC). SL became a standard OS for > Scientific Computing in High Energy Physics at Fermilab, CERN and beyond. > > SL is freely available to the general public, and is a popular > Enterprise Linux rebuild. As a result, it has built a community outside > of Fermilab and HEP. > > With gratitude, the Scientific Linux team would like to recognize > Connie's many years of service and her immense contribution to the > project she founded. > > Connie's outstanding technical and non-technical judgement are the > foundation of Scientific Linux. Her legacy will continue to inform the > way we run SL and we hope she'll remain as a collaborator. > > All the best to Connie in her well-earned retirement. She will be dearly > missed! >