I agree with Vinicius. I used Ubuntu once but found it difficult to navigate between it and Redhat based systems because of the FHS, because the packages were named differently, broken up into sub-packages differently,... It was painful waste of brain power.
I'd wait to hear how Fermilab/CERN plan to address this since we want to be part of that ecosystem. But I encourage everyone to post to this list and state what they would like to see. Beating up on RHEL/CentOS is not going to solve anything for us.For instance, should CERN/Fermilab put resources to providing a Scientific Linux going forward? We discussed this briefly today and we're going to look at CentOS Stream for the desktop. We already have experience deploying Fedora desktops so rapid upgrades is not a problem for us. But we are definitely concerned with CentOS Stream for servers and other infrastructure based systems. ________________________________ From: [email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of Vinícius Ferrão <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2020 10:47 AM To: Maarten <[email protected]> Cc: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Rocky Linux I’ve done this mistake in the past. The major issue with Debian is its lifecycle, even LTS is 5 years only. Same for Ubuntu. It’s just too little. If you need to install it near the end of the 2yr lifecycle you’ll get effectively something like 3yrs of support. The other issue is that the vast majority of academic and scientific software is targeted for Enterprise Linux. As an HPC engineer we always needs to use RHEL/derivatives or SLES/Leap. OpenHPC is only available to those flavors. Mellanox OFED? Ok there’s Ubuntu support nowadays, but the default branches are still for EL/SLE. That’s how things work in our environment. I think the vast majority of people here works on Academia or with science/research/etc. And finally I don’t want to adapt everything to Debian. The FHS is different, scripts will break, etc. Best regards, Vinícius Ferrão Sent from my iPhone > On 10 Dec 2020, at 13:38, Maarten > <[email protected]> wrote: > > I might also consider switching to Debian since it will be hard to tell if > any other still existing rhel clones will continue and Debian has been around > for quite some time. > >> On 12/10/20 8:34 AM, Maarten wrote: >> I will probably be more like to go for Springdale Linux since they've been >> around since before CentOS, I find it hard to put trust in a project that's >> just getting started unless of course CERN changes their decision about >> discontinuing Scientific Linux since they were migrating to CentOS. >> >>> On 12/10/20 5:17 AM, ~Stack~ wrote: >>>> On 12/9/20 9:16 PM, Yasha Karant wrote: >>> >>>> One thing does concern me: having left CentOS (it was all "volunteer" >>>> effort at that epoch as I recall) for SL, a primary motivator was that SL >>>> had professional (employed, not volunteer) persons doing the distros, and >>>> this SL list amounting to support. >>>> >>>> If Rocky is to be all volunteer, how reliable and professional will it be? >>>> This is not a minor issue, as very few enthusiasts or other >>>> non-professionals provide a truly reliable deliverable. >>> >>> I would say, give it time. It wouldn't be the first time Kurtzer started an >>> open source project and turned into a company. :-) >>> >>> >>>> For my use, is EL going to continue to be workstation friendly (e.g., >>>> laptop in which one cannot pick and choose to integrate only Linux >>>> traditionally supported controllers with appropriate drivers, such as >>>> sound "cards", but is stuck with whatever the laptop vendor has used -- >>>> typically MS Win "supported") or is it primarily a server distro? Ubuntu >>>> LTS still seems to be laptop friendly. >>> >>> They are aiming for complete RHEL reproducibility. If the goal is to be >>> as-true-as-possible-RHEL variant then the answer would be in how you use >>> RHEL. >>> >>> But do give it sometime. It's only been two days and the announcement I >>> just saw said that there are now 750 people actively participating in the >>> various forms to communication and they have direction, a plan, and leaders >>> making it happen. And there's thousands of people who have noticed and are >>> talking about it on /. , reddit, lwn, ect. That's pretty impressive and it >>> speaks volumes about the number of people who really do want a true-to-RHEL >>> variant. >>> >>> ~Stack~
