[PLUG] CentOS folds into RedHat

[Paul Heinlein]

On Tue, 7 Jan 2014, Keith Lofstrom wrote:

> 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.

Scientific Linux has slightly different goals than CentOS. The 
difference won't matter in most situations, but it's worth noting:

-> CentOS aims for 100% binary compatibility with RHEL.
-> SL aims for source compatibility with RHEL.

One of the reasons it took the CentOS folks so much longer to release 
their version of 6.0 than the SL folks is that the CentOS devs had to 
reverse engineer the build process and bootstrap all the dependencies 
in exactly the right order. Evidently, that's a tricky process.

I suspect the difference would mainly come into play when third-party 
apps are being used -- though there may be some odd corner cases when 
open source packages would also behave differently.

-- 
Paul Heinlein
heinlein at madboa.com
45°38' N, 122°6' W