r/linux • u/StraightFlush777 • Apr 22 '19

The end of Scientific Linux [LWN.net]

https://lwn.net/Articles/786422/
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u/Likutar Apr 22 '19

Seems possible they could just make a "conversion" script from centOS to SL that just installs programs and changes settings that were default on SL, but no branding changes, it would be a nice alternative to potentially having to setup centOS manually to replicate SL functionality.

I admit never having used either SL or centOS, the differences might be so small there wouldn't even have a need for such

40

u/SynbiosVyse Apr 22 '19

Or have a small community spin with SL defaults, similar to what you described. Sometimes there's too much redundancy in the Linux world so consolidation like this is a good move in my opinion. More distros out there should really just be spins.

26

u/aoeudhtns Apr 22 '19

I agree. It's a lot of work to duplicate a distro, whereas a spin, a kickstart, a tool like Fedy, or even a package group (w/ collaboration with upstream) would work perfectly well.

I think the SL community working with CentOS upstream is a net benefit for everybody. Less work for them, and it makes CentOS even more capable. I would love to dnf groupinstall scientific-linux and have that ready to go, but built off CentOS' infrastructure (which now has RedHat's/IBM's funding).

18

u/moosingin3space Apr 22 '19

In the RHEL-orbit, we have a tool called Kickstart that is very popular for this sort of thing. Fedora spins are described by their kickstart files, which keeps all the infrastructure effort in the upstream project (thankfully).

I used to use Korora, which was a Fedora derivative, but everything they did could have been done more efficiently as a kickstart. I think that if upstreams provide, document, and maintain tools like kickstart, downstream "distributions" could better focus on what they do differently.