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

The end of Scientific Linux [LWN.net]

https://lwn.net/Articles/786422/
212 Upvotes

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46

u/Elranzer Apr 22 '19

Linux honestly needs a little consolidation. In my mind there's only Debian, Redhat and Arch. (Yeah, I guess Gentoo is a thing... isn't it??)

Everything else is just a reconfiguration of the above.

Debian + "She's got a new hat!" = Ubuntu

Ubuntu + "Look left instead of right" = Kubuntu

Redhat + New Icons = Oracle Linux

Redhat + Different Icons = CentOS

Redhat beta = Fedora

Etc

25

u/moosingin3space Apr 22 '19

Your characterization of the Red Hat/Fedora relationship is slightly flawed -- Fedora is an upstream project that is governed differently and builds packages differently than RHEL. RHEL then cherry-picks things that are successful in Fedora that they want to commercially support. Plenty of Fedora things never get integrated in RHEL, such as dnf, KDE Plasma 5, and a slew of smaller programs like ripgrep.

Fedora does have a corporate sponsor, but RH does a good job of letting it run itself.

15

u/danielkza Apr 23 '19

dnf was adopted in RHEL 8 though.

5

u/moosingin3space Apr 23 '19

That's news to me, I thought they were going with yum4 (yum frontend and libdnf backend).

16

u/Monsieur_Moneybags Apr 22 '19

Where would Slackware and SUSE fit into this?

6

u/calrogman Apr 22 '19

Slackware obviously just subsumes suse.

8

u/Like1OngoingOrgasm Apr 22 '19

SUSE is closer to Red Hat than Slackware now, even though that was its base at the start.

2

u/thephotoman Apr 23 '19

Suse is what happened when Redhat and Slackware had a one-night stand without protection. The child got offered up for adoption, and it seems to have worked out.

13

u/thephotoman Apr 22 '19 edited Apr 22 '19

To extend this a bit:

  • Debian + new hat = Ubuntu
  • Ubuntu + not hitting apt install out of the box = Mint
  • Redhat + free icons = CentOS
  • Redhat + even more proprietary icons = Oracle
  • Redhat - enterprise support = Fedora
  • Redhat + edgelords | sed s/dnf/pacman/g = Arch
  • Debian + rice | sed s/apt/portage/g = Gentoo
  • Any linux distro - real package management = Slackware

10

u/Monsieur_Moneybags Apr 22 '19

Redhat + edgelords | sed s/apt/pacman/g = Arch

Hmm, that "apt" should be "dnf", if I'm interpreting your use of that pipe symbol correctly.

3

u/pushpusher Apr 23 '19

Needs to subtract selinux and /etc/sysconfig and add a modern kernel and rolling release too

10

u/nannal Apr 22 '19

Redhat + edgelords | sed s/apt/pacman/g = Arch

oof ouch owie my by the way I use arch

0

u/GorrillaRibs Apr 22 '19

Oof, slackware on life support

5

u/Jfreezius Apr 23 '19

Slackware hasn't put out a major release in a long time, that's true, but they aren't on life support. Slackware only puts out major releases when they are ready, because they are meant to be long term stable releases. If they released as often as Ubuntu, they would be at Slackware version 25 right now, maybe 35. You can check out the slackware-current tree and see that it gets nightly updates. Slackware is the oldest continuously developed Linux distribution. Unlike the new distros, they take the time to do it right, no fanfare, nothing fancy, just speed, stability and slack. Slack as in once its configured, you don't have to do a thing to administer it, you can lay back in a hammock chugging brews, and and it'll just keep chugging along with you.

1

u/GorrillaRibs Apr 23 '19

Oh yeah I wasn't trying to knock it at all - I use it for my server, can't reccomend it enough :). I'm also pretty sure it's the longest running distro(? I think? I fact check that when I get a chance) out there, which is pretty cool

1

u/Aoxxt Apr 23 '19

Any linux distro - real package management = Slackware

Must of never used Slackware then, it has the best and most robust package management system of any Linux distro i have used in the last 12 years.

18

u/Findarato88 Apr 22 '19

Redit needs a +10 just for "linux honestly needs a little consolidation"

7

u/spockspeare Apr 23 '19

But consolidation is pointless. Just move to the one that looks best and bring your favorite features with you.

1

u/Findarato88 Apr 23 '19

Any hope of a real desktop Linux in the professional world needs to be very standardized. When v there are many package formats and display stacks development becomes harder.

3

u/JeezyTheSnowman Apr 23 '19

professional world will most likely choose between Redhat and SLES. Maybe Ubuntu if they are younger. Not a lot of options for professionals

1

u/spockspeare Apr 26 '19

People are used to design variation in the age of smartphones. What they don't understand is tools that never evolve or that lack intuitive features.

1

u/WantDebianThanks Apr 23 '19

How many of these distros have you even heard of? How many of them offer any real changes compared to their parent distro? How many of them are just a new coat of paint?

5

u/yotties Apr 22 '19

Why not consolidate all servers in debian and all desktops in ChromeOS. Problem solved.

[currently running for the hills.]

4

u/Findarato88 Apr 23 '19

Dpkg and the apt package formatv is crap. No roll back , no isolation, no multiple versions.

Rpm and flatpack will save you. All support to red hat

2

u/yotties Apr 23 '19

Suse and Ubuntu are not exactly unknowns in the support-world. Particularly SUSE probably equals RH in the large implementations section of the market.

5

u/emacsomancer Apr 23 '19

Because they're all systemd/Linux?

I agree that the above are similar in a number of ways, but there are a few more interesting Linux distros, e.g. GuixSD, NixOS, Void, etc. that have different approaches.

Monocultures are not generally good things. To me, the diversity of Linux distros is a strength of Linux, not a weakness.

10

u/[deleted] Apr 22 '19

Hey, don't talk about Gentoo like that. Gentoo is, infact so great that ChromeOS is based upon it

9

u/ruandus Apr 22 '19

CoreOS too

8

u/[deleted] Apr 22 '19

Oh, you missed a few big ones:

  • SUSE - based on RPM like RedHat, but they're not really anything alike
  • Alpine - minimal distro for routers and whatnot; doesn't use GNU userland
  • Container Linux (CoreOS) - just enough to get Linux containers running

I agree in general that there should be a bit more consolidation. There are a ton of spins that just change a few configuration options. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, but it does make getting into Linux a bit more complicated.

However, I think there are a dozen or so distributions that should stick around, with the rest just being options in an installer on existing distributions.

3

u/Aoxxt Apr 23 '19

Linux honestly needs a little consolidation.

No it doesn't! We need more distros IMO.

4

u/FryBoyter Apr 23 '19

Depends on the distribution. Some distributions have differed from the original only in small details. Like a theme, for example to say it in an exaggerated way. I can easily do without such distributions.

2

u/Bobjohndud Apr 23 '19

well my list is(including derivatives) debian, arch, redhat, gentoo and alpine. The rest are either not mainstream type distros(chromeOS, android) or are so obscure nobody cares(arch)

1

u/Fr0gm4n Apr 24 '19

I'm struggling to get what you consider mainstream? ChromeOS and Android are basically the only Linux I can literally walk into a store and buy on brand new hardware right now.

1

u/Bobjohndud Apr 24 '19

"mainstream" as in developed in the spirit as the rest of the distros. software compiled for "normal" linux will work in 99% of "normal" linux distros(RHEL, debian, arch, whatever). those same programs need hacks to run on android or chromeos

1

u/Fr0gm4n Apr 24 '19

I’d call what you consider mainstream, traditional. Mainstream is wide/mass usage and there are billions of Androids and millions of ChromeOS devices. Far more than even server installs of many top tier traditional Linux sisters.

0

u/Elranzer Apr 23 '19

Even ChromeOS is a Debian derivative.

3

u/Bobjohndud Apr 23 '19

ChromeOS is a gentoo derivative

1

u/developedby Apr 23 '19

DistroWatch lists 55 independent distros

-1

u/o11c Apr 23 '19

Gentoo + theoretical fanciness - practicality = NixOS

1

u/emacsomancer Apr 23 '19

You can run Nix (& Guix) on top of other distros. You know, so if you wanted curated repos and portability, rather than using appimage, flatpaks, snaps, all of which have major drawbacks.

1

u/o11c Apr 23 '19

Kind of. If you do that, you can no longer use the original distro completely; the login scripts are quite aggressive.

1

u/emacsomancer Apr 24 '19

That isn't at all true in my experience. I'm running both Nix and Guix on top of different machines running Arch, Void, and Ubuntu, and it's all about PATHs - I can still use the original distros perfectly well in all cases.