Re: Scientific Linux etc
Scientific Linux was specifically extensions on CentOS for the high energy physics community (think of it as more like Ubuntu Studio vs Ubuntu or similar)
It got discontinued because most of what was in it was rolled into Centos mainstream and there was no longer a need for it.
The increasing brokenness of RH over the last 10-15 years (where package versions may or may not reflect what's actually inside them thanks to backports of various parts of upstream, leading to people deciding that XYZ is out of date and they MUST compile a local version instead) has been increasingly driving the science community into the loving arms of Debian and Ubuntu or Suse
RH have been making it increasingly clear for a long time that "stability" trumps "usability" and being able to run on the latest hardware - their cash cow customers are financial institutions with large fleets of near-identical systems mostly running as thin(ish) clients and everyone else is a nuisance
There's a lot of inertia involved in "still using Redhat" in many places when the reality is that its model of heavily customised and misleadingly versioned RPMs doesn't fit most organisations using it and hasn't since the mid 2000s. Trying to bang that square peg into a round hold makes for a lot of extra administrative effort which can be better spent elsewhere
Biting the hand that feeds IT
