For months, this “war” is active, and is more important than you might think because if Red Hat distribution is number one in the business , its clones and CentOS binaries Scientific Linux recently represent valuable alternatives for those who can, need or want to pay for the support of the company Red Hat, but like to enjoy the excellence of their system.

This article, including title, is an adaptation with additions specific to the original written by Jamie Duncan in Lost In Open Source, which considers both proposals designed to answer the questions that interested in these clones are two in particular: CentOS still the right choice? Is Scientific Linux ready for the position of the other

As you know, recently released CentOS 6, eight months after he saw the light RHEL 6 , a delay that many are willing to tolerate and that comes in the wake of the disappointment of some the developers of the project with the same, and even his “flight” to Scientific Linux.

Scientific Linux on your part is a more recent, created and maintained by CERN and Fermilab, so it has a solid base of engineers hired to take care of it, and a more active developer community.

Turning now to the turning points to value presented by the author of the original article, we find:

Maturity and community support

Maximum

: In production are not worth the nonsense. No matter whether or not you pay for support, if the product has to prove it is serious.

against a community that, as you can see, it can be fragmented by internal discussions, we talked about CentOS is an added plus very interesting have two of the most distinguished research laboratories in the world charge of the project, we speak of Scientific Linux (the original author is not as straightforward at this point, “drop it”, I interpret it).

But it is a very active community of contributors, without a quality community support there is nothing to do, and perhaps to the “newness” of Scientific Linux, CentOS continue to have better response.

Workflow

Despite considering that there are not many differences between the ways work against Scientific Linux CentOS at this point Jamie Duncan opts for the latter to consider its communication with the community is more present and its better researched tools . It includes a presentation report (PDF) published late last year aa valid as an explanation that what is based on Scientific Linux.

CentOS, a repository structure hundred percent compared to RHEL clone , is more favorable in this section that Scientific Linux, who adapt this structure to their interests, as well add own packages to the repository. By contrast, there have been complaints in the delay of CentOS to release security updates, but not in Scientific Linux.

the availability of the repositories there is no perceptible difference in any case both options have a precise answer.

Time

support

crucial question in choosing an operating system in production. Red Hat provides regularly 7 years support for any version of RHEL, CentOS and WIN remains in line .

only offers support for 3 years version, but is rethinking. But this information is confusing, because it contradicts the roadmap of the distribution, where for example Scientific Linux 6, launched this March, would end up receiving updates November 2016 . (As time support SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop and Server-SLED, SLES, offering up to 10 years)

original article’s author concludes his talk without answering the two questions we asked at the beginning of this post, the question remains in the air until they see if CentOS resists weather and manages to overcome its bumps , even if Scientific Linux is still climbing and is in clear dominance.

Time will tell what is everything. Meanwhile we have sponsored a new distribution efficiently and with a more venerable than going through difficult times, but go ahead. The final decision is left to the user (the professional user, that is).