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Fermilab/CERN recommendation for Linux distribution

news.fnal.gov

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Re: Fermilab/CERN recommendation for Linux distribution

#51

Post by amelius »

acatton wrote: post #41
qwerty456127 wrote: post #31

Obviously stability is the most important factor for the people running nuclear experiments so they choose RHEL. Nevertheless, if I were them, I would consider trying Nix or Guix to potrntially turn the configs/builds into comparably strict math and making these reproducible.

Config can also be made reproducible with VM images, containers, home-built packages, configuration-management tools (ansible, puppet, …) or a mix of all or some of them. Nix/Guix is no silverbullet.

How do you grow your system, or do you suggest that you build your system as a bunch of microservices running inside containers?

Re: Fermilab/CERN recommendation for Linux distribution

#52

Post by bclemens »

xorcist wrote: post #45

Alma produces a rather snazzy script to migrate from CentOS which works really well. I'm told it also works with Rocky, but I haven't tried it.

Rocky Linux has migration scripts available at https://github.com/rocky-linux/rocky-tools/tree/main/migrate...

An easy shortcut though, in case you have to hand type it out somewhere, is https://rockylinux.org/migrate2rocky.sh

Re: Fermilab/CERN recommendation for Linux distribution

#53

Post by brnt »

fancyfredbot wrote: post #47

What happened to scientific Linux? It's a bit odd that it seems to be being discontinued rather than rebased on Alma? Do they no longer believe scientific Linux adds value?

It had been discontinued a while ago, in favour of a flavour of CentOS (at the time CentOS 7 was released, instead of Scientific Linux 7).

Re: Fermilab/CERN recommendation for Linux distribution

#54

Post by type0 »

liamnal wrote: post #30
dotancohen wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as it pains me to say it, FOSS devs are a finite resource and it seems that being divided is just as if having been conquered. Neither Rocky nor Alma are progressing at the rate that a CentOS fork with a hostile RH upstream would progress if they were working together and not duplicating efforts. What is the philosophical schism between the two? Why can't they split the workload on a single distro and reunite…

It's just like with any distribution, each have their own philosophies and how they want to tackle something. Oracle Linux is still around for example, but we don't talk about them too often. Rocky seems to have mostly volunteers. Alma has people who are likely paid because they come from or likely still work for CloudLinux. Either way, you're getting a RHEL clone if you go with either. And that is keeping in mind th…

> but again no one really wants to talk about that

That is the best way to treat Oracle, just pretend it doesn't exist.

Re: Fermilab/CERN recommendation for Linux distribution

#55

Post by flumpcakes »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #19

What I didn't like about AlmaLinux so far is that it takes more effort to google solutions to problems than for Ubuntu. That may sound stupid or lazy, but there it is.

Ubuntu was/is by far the more popular distro to use outside of the corporate world. There's a lot more blogs, container base images, tutorials out there because it was popular for tinkerers. This is also the reason it has now become popular inside the corporate world.

You may find it harder to find resources for AlmaLinux/CentOS/etc. if you are using the same methods for searching for resources as you would for a Ubuntu (or even Debian) based OS.

However, there are much better and more fully comprehensive training material out there for 'Enterprise Linux' distributions (RHEL, CentOS which means also AlmaLinux and Rocky) because of the widely industry accepted RH certifications.

So to wildly make broad statements: Ubuntu based distros are good for finding resources like blogs and tutorials that are aimed at people who are tinkering and just starting out, maybe from a dev background. EL distros are good for comprehensive training for people who probably have had "Sys admin" as a job title at some point.

Re: Fermilab/CERN recommendation for Linux distribution

#56

Post by jl6 »

I’m out of the loop on RHEL forks. Can someone explain why it is important to be binary compatible with RHEL? Is there a lot of software whose binaries will only run on RHEL? Or is this more a case of wanting something free that can still make use of RHEL-specific skills and knowledge?

Re: Fermilab/CERN recommendation for Linux distribution

#57

Post by flumpcakes »

dijit wrote: post #40
usr1106 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux developers have created dependencies on Linux. Portability is a lot of work and perfect portability does not exist. If you think you don't want systemd, why don't you use BSD?

> Linux developers have created dependencies on Linux. Sorry, ignoring the rest of the thread: this statement isn't true even marginally. There are linux distributions that can operate on other kernels than Linux. Debian was my favourite choice for this with their HURD ( https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/ ) and kFreeBSD ( https://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/ ) implementation. The GNU userland itself does not de…

> There are linux distributions that can operate on other kernels than Linux.

Then by definition they're not specifically a Linux distribution?

Re: Fermilab/CERN recommendation for Linux distribution

#58

Post by flumpcakes »

Mikhail_K wrote: post #27
Dracophoenix wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a RHEL clone, so no. However, you can install runit or OpenRC if you want.

That doesn't solve the problem, because systemd developers have insinuated dependencies on it into multiple unrelated system components.

What is the problem with systemd?

Re: Fermilab/CERN recommendation for Linux distribution

#59

Post by dijit »

flumpcakes wrote: post #57
dijit wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Linux developers have created dependencies on Linux. Sorry, ignoring the rest of the thread: this statement isn't true even marginally. There are linux distributions that can operate on other kernels than Linux. Debian was my favourite choice for this with their HURD ( https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/ ) and kFreeBSD ( https://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/ ) implementation. The GNU userland itself does not de…

> There are linux distributions that can operate on other kernels than Linux. Then by definition they're not specifically a Linux distribution?

Richard Stallman agrees with you.

I’m happy to take a different name, but Wikipedia at least refers to it this way.

Debian themselves say that they’re an operating system.

Regardless; many (if not most, if not close to all) utilities developed on top of Linux are portable across not only distributions, but other kernels or even operating systems.

It’s not fair to say that “those people who develop on systems with Linux kernels only support linux”.

Re: Fermilab/CERN recommendation for Linux distribution

#60

Post by spookie »

darthrupert wrote: post #8
djha-skin wrote: post #4

All this time I had thought that Rocky Linux was winning the fork war over Alma (in the fight to be the successor to CentOS), but this post might change that with a good chunk of the science community throwing their weight behind Alma. Do we have anyone else in the audience that has any insights over whether Alma is more prevalent over Rocky or is it the other way around? I know I can run Rocky Linux from DigitalOcea…

> Alma Having just played through the F.E.A.R. games that name gives me weird feelings.

Means soul in Spanish/Portuguese
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