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