Didn't plan on chiming in but Larry's post tugged. I started with Slackware in '93, kernel 1.3, looking for an cheap X11 workstation alternative to the then $15k a pop SunOS workstations, of which we could only afford 2. I proposed to my division director to let me buy 12 Pentium 90's at $2k a pop to deploy this new thing called a linux workstation. I recall a committee of two, one from our scientific computing division, who advised against it, saying there was no vendor backing. Lucky for me, my division director took a chance. Well, the rest, they say, is history. Like Larry I switched to RedHat when they came in boxes. I stumbled on SL when I started working on ROOT. Version 0.6 then. There was this thing called FermiLinux and when Redhat stopped selling boxes and wanted a subscription for RHEL, I switched us over to SL. Remember Connie's photos when SL started installing? The SL mailing list is fantastic resource. I suspect like all good things it will also come to an end. I hope it lasts a little longer, at least till I retire, so we can all bitch about CentOS 8 and commiserate together the loss of SL. Lol. On 2/25/20 1:56 PM, P. Larry Nelson wrote: > Brett Viren wrote on 2/25/20 8:15 AM: >> "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. > > Not quite a short blurb, but not too long either. > > I am retired now (nearly 4 years) after nearly 50 years in the IT biz - 44 of > those at UIUC and 20 of those as an IT Admin for our local HEP group, and I can > tell you that there are two people who made my life immeasurably better. So I > just want to toot their horn. > > Troy Dawson and Connie Sieh of FermiLab. Here's a great interview with Troy > that will answer a lot of questions as well as elucidate why we went with SL. > (I suspect the following will get transmogrified by Fermi's Proof Point URL > secret encoder ring) > > https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__old.montanalinux.org_interview-2Dtroy-2Ddawson-2Dscientific-2Dlinux-2Djune2011.html&d=DwIDaQ&c=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA&r=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A&m=p76IJCxmwsNBSv-yK1gjd90aDixiH0QGmAOt17f6Gf0&s=_1X0fjomFwROuoTUSK43cCqxlIRTvLj6oFiyBnixFAE&e= > > Alas, much to my initial dismay, Troy announced in 2011 he was going to work for > RedHat, but Pat Riehecky jumped in to those big shoes (Thanks Pat!). I would be > remiss if I didn't also mention Urs Beyerle and his work on the SL Live > CDs/DVDs. And, of course, the (then) smallish but amazingly helpful SL user > community on this list. > > After infuriatingly frustrating and hapless encounters with RHEL support on even > the simplest of issues, being able to have one-on-one interactions with Troy, > Connie, and Urs (and other users on the list) was like stepping out of a cold > dark cave onto a warm sun drenched beach. [not hyperbole] > > Our journey (in case you're interested and still reading) went something like: > > Late 90's and early 2000's - SunOS (expensive hardware, expensive maintenance > contracts, expensive licensing). Start playing with this new toy Redhat 2.0. > (spare desktop hardware, almost free software, no licensing). Then Redhat 3, > then 4 - now seeing that we can replicate all services from SunOS to RH. > No longer a toy. Then RH 5 and 6, 7. 8, 9 and End-of-Life. LHC was ramping up > and about to spew petabytes of ATLAS experiment data. Time to start building > racks of storage farms and compute clusters. Switch to RHEL. But with that > came confusing and frustrating licensing plus the aforementioned support snafus. > > Then an epiphany - one of our engineers was collaborating with another > institution on loading linux onto embedded processors as part of the Dark Energy > Survey telescope and came to me for linux advice. They were using a free linux > installation from CERN called Scientific Linux (SLC). "Really!" He said > FermiLab had a similar version (SLF) but that they chose SLC for whatever > reason. He said it's the same as RHEL. "Really!" (again) I found FermiLab's > website for SLF and the rest, they say, is history! > > We started with RHEL3, moved to SL4, then SL5 (my favorite) and wound up at SL6. > SL7 was out and the HEP community was transitioning to it when I retired so I > didn't have to deal with it. :-) > > Anyways, now back to retirement. > - Larry >