It is odd that you have no budget to support critical systems for your department, Yasha. What if you power servers down and see how "critical " they indeed are? And if they are not - then get fedora and be done with it. On Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 14:46 ONeal, Miles < [log in to unmask]> wrote: > SL didn't have "support", but the mailing list provided excellent, > real-world support. At least during the SL 3-5 timeframe, CentOS had > nothing even close that I could find. > > There's obvious value in the broader community involvement that comes > through CentOS, and in providing a free alternative for those who don't > need / can't afford RH licensing. Wiping out CentOS would hurt the > ecosystem. That doesn't mean it can't happen, but it seems unlikely. > > One company I worked for never bought RHEL because it would have been too > pricey under the circumstances. We found a cou0ple of bugs that got > reported back upstream. Another company I worked for moved to RHEL from > CentOS as soon as it could afford to, because we needed the support. Both > companies made the right decision for their situation, and both were good > for RedHat, just in different ways. > > RedHat has been fine with CentOS and SL. I see no reason for that to > change. IBM is not micro-managing RedHat. Hopefully that won't change, > either. > > -Miles > ------------------------------ > *From:* [log in to unmask] < > [log in to unmask]> on behalf of Yasha Karant > <[log in to unmask]> > *Sent:* Friday, February 21, 2020 13:21 > *To:* [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> > *Subject:* Re: Is Scientfic Linux Still Active as a Distribution? > > Caution: EXTERNAL email > > > As we could not afford the license-for-fee model that RedHat started a > number of years ago (prior to which, one could download and install > production RedHat -- not the "Fedora" equivalent -- licensed for free but > without RedHat support -- but updates, etc., were available without fee), > we too went with CentOS. Before RH, I used Debian, but there were issues > of stability. RH was stable. The problem with CentOS was that it was more > or less a volunteer deployment, and we did not have the personnel to join > the effort as our internal and external funding could not be used for that > purpose. Once SL became a more-or-less "stock" version of RHEL, and given > that SL had professional funded employed personnel (as required by HEP and > funded by the various governments that support Fermilab or CERN), this was > the logical choice. SL came with no support, but as several of us (myself > included) were at one epoch "kernels internals" persons, and were "systems > persons", and not as "IT" but as scientists and engineers, with the SL > users list for "help", we had no significant issues -- see the recent > exchange concerning a bug in EPEL that prevented an "easy" upgrade of the > MATE desktop GUI environment. > > However, RedHat is now owned by IBM, and CentOS is the RedHat "licensed > for free" distro front end. The only reason IBM exists is not to support > the goals of the Freesoftware Foundation (GPL), but to support profit -- it > is a major for-profit (effectively, trans-national) corporation. Thus, one > cannot rely upon entities within such a corporation to do anything that > will undermine or reduce the profits of the corporation (including the > overall compensation package of the CEO and the like), except in those > nation states that have enforced regulations controlling the product > deployments. The USA has very little compared to much of the EU. As > Fermilab/CERN do not exist for the same purpose as IBM (individual > scientists who may be the group leaders, etc., at such entities > notwithstanding), SL was a viable alternative. There is absolutely no > reason to assume that IBM will be such an alternative unless one wants to > pay. I am not going to argue with those who claim we are "freeloaders" > despite paying the taxes that in part support Fermilab and CERN, but not > CentOS -- if we cannot pay, we should not use -- but the realities of much > university-based academic research is that there is no money and we do what > we can. > > In the simplest terms. I trust IBM to maximize overall > return-on-investment (e.g., profit), and a "free" CentOS that truly > competes with licensed-for-fee products does not fit that for-profit model. > > Yasha Karant > > On 2/21/20 7:41 AM, Michel Jouvin wrote: > > Hi, > > I'm surprised by the so negative feeling against CentOS which is a great > project too and has been working well since it was "acquired" by Red Hat. I > see no official sign that it should change. Moving from SL to CentOS is > straightforward, I don't think you can speak about it as a migration as it > is exactly the same product. And staying with CentOS will give you a chance > to meet the DUNE people at some point and more generally the HEP community > if you liked interacting with it! > > Cheers, > > Michel > Le 21/02/2020 à 16:32, Peter Willis a écrit : > > Hello, > > > Thanks to everyone for clarifying the future status of SL. > > I guess it’s time to start researching he docs for Ubuntu/Debian or > something. > > > > Looks like we need to revise our computing cluster plan. > > The computer here is pretty small with only two nodes and a controller > totalling 112 CPUs. > > We use it for numerical modelling of ocean and river currents and sediment > transport (OpenMP/MPICH/FORTRAN). > > The changeover will be pretty small. We are still waiting for the OK for > a new node or two. > > The current nodes are ten years old. The update to a controller and SL7 > was a last ditch effort to join the two nodes and increase the scale of > the models without costing too much more. > > > > In other news, the link you shared has an article about ‘DUNE’ which seems > like an interesting project. > > I’d certainly frostbite a few toes to just stand around and watch that > thing run experiments. > > > > Thanks for the info, > > > > Peter > > > > > > >Hello Peter, > > > > > >> Is Scientific Linux still active? > > >Scientific Linux 6 and 7 will be supported until they are EOL, but there > will be no SL8. > > > > > >Here is the official announcement from last April: > > > > > > > https://listserv.fnal.gov/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind1904&L=SCIENTIFIC-LINUX-USERS&P=817 > <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__listserv.fnal.gov_scripts_wa.exe-3FA2-3Dind1904-26L-3DSCIENTIFIC-2DLINUX-2DUSERS-26P-3D817&d=DwMF-g&c=B_W-eXUX249zycySS1AyzjABMeYirU1wvo9-GmMObjY&r=Z7xHp2tIJsvAE2FtPxl_lynvf4hA_FJ8mKsaIgvY6Dk&m=1zP0LygxDwV3-fUs-jcM2DUCZNrhuLf05Y7PBpNbezA&s=Mp_eieQpDG0QyCOHMRj4c9vZVvy8-Wu-IgGpxnevSCI&e=> > > > > > >Bonnie King > > >