Fedora home server using core 9

[Marko Vojinovic]

On Monday 01 September 2008 07:12, g wrote:
> Frode Petersen wrote:
> > Just curious, as I'm about to install one of them alongside F9: Is there
> > any reason to choose one over the other? My impression is that they are
> > pretty much equivalent choices, but that might be a superficial
> > observation for all I know.
>
> in fairness to centos, i tried it a few years back, but felt it a bit
> awkward. i have been told that it has improved, but i have not tried it
> again, so i can not offer comparison of it to sl [scientific linux].
[snip]
> i would hate to think that either fermi or cern would use something that
> they did not feel totally safe with.
>
> i do not consider what i do to be anywhere near as critical or crucial, but
> it is comforting to know that i am in 'good company' with my system and
> data.
>
> as far as support, these people are 'professional'. what more can one ask
> for?

Ok, everyone already pointed out that both SL and CentOS are almost identical 
clones of RHEL. So each of those distros should give you more-or-less 
equivalent functionality.

But the real reason for the existence of SL is not just "yet another distro".  
The SL distro has rather specific purpose --- to form a common basic 
operating system infrastructure for all institutions that are to become and 
operate as "grid sites" (see the CERN homepage to find out about "the grid").

This means the following --- in the future, RHEL and derivatives (like CentOS) 
might possibly push some updates that could interfere with the custom-made 
grid middleware software installed on those sites. If all sites were running 
--- say --- CentOS, this single system/whatever update could threaten to 
bring down the whole grid.

This is of course unacceptable, so Cern and Fermilab decided to roll their own 
RHEL clone, and *require* all grid sites to use it, in order to have control 
over what updates get pushed to them, and eventually refrain some "dangerous" 
updates made at RHEL to reach the grid sites. And they have a team of experts 
carefully examining each update of RHEL/CentOS/whatever to render it "safe" 
or "unsafe" for SL.

This is of course neccessary for grid sites, but for an ordinary user this 
means that SL will in time start lagging behind in being updated, and some 
updates may well never reach the users of SL.

The bottom line is that SL, CentOS and RHEL are equivalent *now*, but in 
future this may/will not be so, and SL will be regarded as "older".

If I were an ordinary user/admin of a system unrelated to Cern and/or grid 
stuff, I would stick to CentOS and leave SL to people who really need it and 
use it. SL has a well defined target of who its users are and what it is used 
for --- if you do not recognize yourself to be among those target users, my 
suggestion is to leave it alone.

HTH, :-)
Marko