William Pitcock wrote:
Anyway, I was just wondering what the general consensus of NANOG is regarding CentOS vs Scientific Linux. SL generally has faster security updates and people are *paid* to work on it fulltime. CentOS on the other hand is supported out-of-the-box by most software.
William
The two teams have different goals. Scientific Linux is designed to create a common install base for labs. Which helps ensure repeatable results and reduces the need for schools to develop and maintain their own independent OS/software projects. SL uses RHEL as a base, but has a different build environment, and may build against different versions of libraries, as well as include packages which add or change functionality. The goal of CentOS is to create a 100% compatible version of RHEL. Cent tries to replicate the build environment of RHEL as closely as possible. This ensures 100% compatible programs - bugs, regressions, and all. For most, I suspect this difference in philosophy results in negligible difference. However, some may need this. Especially if they test with CentOS, and use RHEL in production, relying on the two to function and perform identically. I support CentOS, and hope the project resolves some of these problems that have been lingering for the last year. As long as there are individuals who support the project, there will still be a CentOS. --Blake