Hello there, I'm quite sad about SL EoL.
I'm no scientist, just an electronics guy who do a lot of research in RF (as hobby, mostly testing antennas for ham radio in VHF bands) from Argentina. Fot SL the most "well done" linux distribution, for people who simply knows. Will look forward to move to another distribution. Cheers from Argentina El sáb., 22 de febrero de 2020 8:46 p. m., Keith Lofstrom <kei...@kl-ic.com> escribió: > I'm an independent electronics inventor, heavily dependent > on both competent software and competent laboratory science, > both for the knowledge I depend on and the tools I use to > transform that knowledge into products and services for > my customers. > > SL has been a very good tool for that. Thanks to all who > have contributed. > > I depend on "benign neglect" for a stable computing > platform - just enough funding and staffing to fix urgent > problems, but not continuously mutate the platform to > conform to ephemeral fashion or management whim. > > I moved /from/ Windows to gain that stability, even if > that limits the choice of new widgets I can attach to my > (older) computers. I have plenty of replacement-spare > old widgets, and I don't need the distraction of a > rapidly mutating platform optimized for market churn > and planned-obsolescence sales. > > I'm actually glad that Microsoft, Apple, and IBM are > busily churning those markets, because it keeps their > customers distracted and not bothering me with those > distractions while I think and work. The hardware cast > off by the fashion-chasers is still abundant on eBay, > and I have enough of it to last me for life (except > for the batteries and backlights for my old Thinkpads). > > I presume there are enough like me, some of whom are on > this list, that we can continue to carve out a community > space on top of CentOS, focused on inquiry and reliability. > > If CentOS 9 or 10 or 11 goes off the rails, there are > enough of us here to tweak CentOS 7 or 8 into something > we can continue to use, just like Linux was "in the good > old days". > > While "security by obscurity" is not optimum, I presume a > smaller community of impoverished science geeks is a less > tempting target for professional software criminals than > million-dollar IT departments for billion-dollar > corporations and governments, or billions of hapless > consumers. We are part of the global target, but we are > unlikely to attract specific attention from the bad guys. > > And while we still benefit from the use of servers at > Fermilabs for our "static" distro and our active mailing > list, perhaps we should have a backup plan for migration > in case some bureaucrat decides to pull the plug on us. > That has /always/ been a risk for what we do here; we are > one presidential tweet away from Saint Louis USDA exile. > > As a community of scientific, like-minded Linux users, > let's begin to prepare a rudimentary plan B, and hope > that we never need to implement it. > > Keith > > -- > Keith Lofstrom kei...@keithl.com >
