Scientific Linux 6.0 released [LWN.net]

Scientific Linux 6.0 released

Posted Mar 6, 2011 9:33 UTC (Sun) by Np237 (guest, #69585)
In reply to: Scientific Linux 6.0 released by malor
Parent article: Scientific Linux 6.0 released

I dont understand the dichotomy you make between servers and desktops.

You need the same stability on (professional) desktops than you need on servers. Just because Ubuntu with its 6-month release cycle is popular among geeks, it doesnt make it suitable in a corporate environment. Windows doesnt change every 6 months, that is part of what makes its success in professional desktop usage.

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Scientific Linux 6.0 released

Posted Mar 6, 2011 14:02 UTC (Sun) by malor (guest, #2973) [Link] (1 responses)

I think of that as the price to pay for the overall level of user-interface polish and easy usability of nearly all hardware. If your particular environment is as intolerant of change on desktops as on servers, and you also want a nicely polished desktop UI, I don't think there are any Linux distros that suit at all well.

Ubuntu LTS is probably the closest match, but with that set of requirements, I think you'd probably be better off just running Windows in most environments.

Scientific Linux 6.0 released

Posted Mar 6, 2011 16:43 UTC (Sun) by Np237 (guest, #69585) [Link]

Our experience with Debian is quite nice. It is only lacking on hardware support, which is the easiest of all these requirements to catch up with by ourselves.

Windows is a no-go in a scientific computing environment.

Scientific Linux 6.0 released

Posted Mar 7, 2011 16:57 UTC (Mon) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link]

You need the same stability on (professional) desktops than you need on servers. Just because Ubuntu with its 6-month release cycle is popular among geeks, it doesnt make it suitable in a corporate environment.

Yes, but you can get support on Debian and Ubuntu for longer than six months, and you don't have to upgrade when the next release comes out, although I have yet to be convinced that Ubuntu (or at least Kubuntu) can be trivially upgraded at the end of a long-term support release cycle to the next LTS version.

Windows doesnt change every 6 months, that is part of what makes its success in professional desktop usage.

This sounds like the argument about "old being good", which leaves users with ancient versions of popular desktop environments and having to manually install software from source because the distribution only packages ancient versions of applications. That's a solution which is only good for administrators who just want to push something out there and forget about it (and whether the users actually like it or not).

And yes, when I had to use Windows in a workplace, even being able to use a recent version was bad enough. So you can imagine how much fun it was to use an "old but good" version.