[PLUG] CentOS folds into RedHat

Keith Lofstrom keithl at gate.kl-ic.com
Tue Jan 7 23:37:14 UTC 2014


On Tue, Jan 07, 2014 at 02:27:56PM -0800, Michael Dexter wrote:
> I'm sure you've seen this. In case you haven't:
> http://www.karan.org/blog/2014/01/07/as-a-community-for-the-community/

Hrm.  It's unclear how this will change compatabilities and
such.  There are a lot of words in the annoucements suggesting
streamlining of the process, but not about new barriers to
collaboration.  When some outsiders become insiders, other
outsiders can be pushed further outside.

CentOS has always followed RedHat Enterprise Linux, and
(IMHO) acted as an independent source and an independent
test of RHEL code and behavior.  When the independence
goes away, we lose a parallax view of the development
of this trailing-edge but super-stable distro.  

I run Scientific Linux, which trails both CentOS and RHEL.
SL isn't about compatability with the latest hardware, but
about very stable platforms with very long term support 
(provided by groups at FermiLabs and CERN).  SL runs on
giant supercomputer clusters, for enormous numeric jobs
that can run for weeks or months.  Stability is essential.

However, since SL and CentOS derive from the same RHEL
sources, if I need to add an application or upgrade a
library, I can usually use the CentOS or RHEL package.
I hope this move does not damage that compatability.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com



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