Scientific Linux (SL) was a

Linux distribution A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one ...

produced by

Fermilab Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located just outside Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics. Since 2007, Fermilab has been oper ...

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gen ...

DESY The Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (English ''German Electron Synchrotron''), commonly referred to by the abbreviation DESY, is a national research center in Germany. It operates particle accelerators used to investigate the structure of mat ...

and by

ETH Zurich (colloquially) , former_name = eidgenössische polytechnische Schule , image = ETHZ.JPG , image_size = , established = , type = Public , budget = CHF 1.896 billion (2021) , rector = Günther Dissertori , president = Joël Mesot , a ...

. It is a

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

based on

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a commercial open-source Linux distribution developed by Red Hat for the commercial market. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is released in server versions for x86-64, Power ISA, ARM64, and IBM Z and a desktop ...

. This product is derived from the free and open-source software made available by

Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices worldwide. Red Hat has become a ...

, but is not produced, maintained or supported by them. In April 2019, it was announced that feature development for Scientific Linux would be discontinued, but that

maintenance Maintenance may refer to: Biological science * Maintenance of an organism * Maintenance respiration Non-technical maintenance * Alimony, also called ''maintenance'' in British English * Champerty and maintenance, two related legal doct ...

will continue to be provided for the 6.x and 7.x releases through the end of their life cycles.

and

will utilize CentOS Stream and

AlmaLinux AlmaLinux is a free and open source Linux distribution, created originally by CloudLinux to provide a community-supported, production-grade enterprise operating system that is binary-compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). The first st ...

for their deployment of 8.x release instead.

History

already had a Linux distribution known as Fermi Linux, a

long-term support Long-term support (LTS) is a product lifecycle management policy in which a stable release of computer software is maintained for a longer period of time than the standard edition. The term is typically reserved for open-source software, where i ...

release based on

was creating their next version of CERN Linux, also based on RHEL. CERN contacted Fermilab about doing a collaborative release. Connie Sieh was the main developer and driver behind the first prototypes and initial release. The first official release of Scientific Linux was version 3.0.1, released on May 10, 2004. In 2015, CERN began migrating away from Scientific Linux to

CentOS CentOS (, from Community Enterprise Operating System; also known as CentOS Linux) is a Linux distribution that provides a free and open-source community-supported computing platform, functionally compatible with its upstream source, Red Hat En ...

. Scientific Linux is now maintained by a cooperative of science labs and universities. Fermilab is its primary sponsor.

Design philosophy

The primary purpose of Scientific Linux is to produce a common Linux distribution for various labs and universities around the world, thus reducing duplicated effort. The main goals are to have everything compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux with only minor additions and changes, and to allow easy customization for a site, without disturbing the Linux base. Unlike other distributions such as Poseidon Linux, it does not contain a large collection of scientific software as its name may suggest. However, it provides good compatibility to install such software.

Features

Scientific Linux is derived from Red Hat Enterprise Linux, with protected components, such as

trademarks, removed, thus making it freely available. New releases are typically produced about two months after each Red Hat release. As well as a full distribution equal to two DVDs, Scientific Linux is also available in LiveCD and LiveDVD versions. Scientific Linux offers

wireless Wireless communication (or just wireless, when the context allows) is the transfer of information between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or other continuous guided medium for the transfer. The most ...

and

Bluetooth Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limi ...

out of the box, and it comes with a comprehensive range of software, such as multimedia codecs,

Samba Samba (), also known as samba urbano carioca (''urban Carioca samba'') or simply samba carioca (''Carioca samba''), is a Brazilian music genre that originated in the Afro-Brazilian communities of Rio de Janeiro in the early 20th century. Havi ...

, and Compiz, as well as servers and clients, storage clients, networking, and system administration tools. It also contains a set of tools for making custom versions, thus allowing institutions and individuals to create their own variant.

Release history

Historical releases of Scientific Linux are the following. Each release is subjected to a period of public testing before it is considered 'released'.

Support

Security updates are provided for as long as Red Hat continues to release updates and patches for their versions.

References

External links

Scientific Linux Homepage
* {{Linux-distro 2004 software Enterprise Linux distributions RPM-based Linux distributions State-sponsored Linux distributions X86-64 Linux distributions CERN software Linux distributions