[Beowulf] SuSE 9.3

Tue Jul 12 07:23:44 PDT 2005

We've been a CentOS shop since version 3.0 and haven't looked back.  The
fact that they offer update support for 5 years allows us more
flexibility in planning our upgrades.  I've noticed that a lot of people
on the fedora front do the "every other release" upgrade cycle which
probably works out perfectly, as support for each release is continued
up until the second subsequent release.  It is then transfered to
FedoraLegacy, so you don't really lose support altogether (though my
experience with them for earlier RH distros wasn't that inspiring).

Basically, the choice is yours.  FC2 was really impressive, but it is
also getting up there in age, mostly because of Fedora's rapid release
cycle and is, I believe, being transfered to Fedora Legacy already.  You
should always take that into consideration.

But in any case, good luck with your build.

-Brian

On Tue, 2005-07-12 at 08:57 -0400, Robert G. Brown wrote:
> Gerry Creager N5JXS writes:
> 
> > We have also become fond of CentOS (specifically, v4.0).
> 
> Where it is worth parenthetically noting that Centos 4 "is" RHEL 4 which
> "is" Fedora 4, only frozen.  Also that (IIRC) Scientific Linux is built
> on top of RHEL 4 (and hence is "like" Centos plus add-ons if it doesn't
> actually share de-RH-logified rpms).
> 
> Regarding FC -- FC 1 sucked -- sort of a destabilized RH 9 and no (good)
> support for x86-64.  FC 2 was pretty good and by the time it got turned
> into Linux at Duke (FC2 plus enhancements and fixes) it was very stable and
> has run on both cluster nodes and desktops for a long time, since we are
> updating only every other FC release (and will have a linux at duke based
> on FC 4 "soon" this summer).  FC 3 is running on the laptop I'm typing
> this on (and a few other systems in my house) and seems to work very
> well and contain significant enhancements of various sorts relative to
> FC 3.
> 
> However, my broader experience is that with distros your mileage ALWAYS
> may vary.  People tend to have a negative experience (often because of a
> quirk in their particular combination of hardware) and then write a
> distro off, but if one perseveres and gets a clean install it will
> probably run just fine -- not that crazy given the tremendous overlap in
> source and build across distros.  For example, saying that you "like"
> only some of Centos, RHEL, SL, or FC but not the rest is almost
> certainly due to user error or because you dislike something about the
> philosophy of one or the other, not because there are deep substantive
> differences in install, basic package selection, build methodology, etc.
> 
> I personally think that FC is only marginally less stable than the RHEL
> clones, for example, and in anything but a brand-new FC release the
> update stream almost certainly fixes those relatively few initial
> problems.  This makes yum a key component of any install, but WITH yum
> one has a truly impressive range of prebuilt RPMs available with the
> various add-on repos.
> 
> The dark side of the RHEL clones is the slowness of their advances.
> Centos 3 was running GSL in some really early version LONG after
> significant new functionality and bug fixes were available in the STABLE
> RELEASE version in FC.  Stability and update stream are just great, but
> I personally think RHEL may be carrying the stability thing to a fault.
> The kernel, also, can be a real problem if "stabilized" for too long --
> two years is a LONG time in hardware space; lots of products released
> and supported in more aggressive kernel update streams, lots of
> improvements in the kernel itself.
> 
>    rgb
> 
> > 
> > gerry
> > 
> > Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
> >> Fedora core 2 i already tried and when installed at my dual, it was wasting
> >> cpu time for nothing. The worst distribution ever. Not worth downloading if
> >> your intentions are more than 'just run linux'. If you need to run
> >> applications that will eat system time, Fedora Core is the worst choice.
> >> 
> >> In general Suse and Redhat are deteriorating, only their commercial product
> >> lines might be doing fine, which are what is it, $1500 a piece or so in
> >> case of Redhat? 
> >> 
> >> Suse 9.3 was a waste of money. It doesn't even install correct. Either you
> >> get 'kernel panic', or some file system stuff is going wrong.
> >> 
> >> Amazingly Suse 9.0 at the same machine worked fine (but of course 2.4.x is
> >> wrong kernel for a quad opteron so i must upgrade that).
> >> 
> >> Anyone tried opensolaris.org actually and download their compiler at 
> >> http://opensolaris.org/os/community/tools/sun_studio_tools/
> >> 
> >> Or is this all a big commercial show from Sun?
> >> 
> >> At 05:40 PM 7/11/2005 -0400, Michael Joyner wrote:
> >> 
> >>>After discussing it with the physics professor, we have decided to try 
> >>>Fedora 2 + OSCAR.
> >>>
> >>>Wish me luck! :)
> >>>
> >>>John Hearns wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>On Mon, 2005-07-11 at 11:32 -0400, Michael Joyner wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>>Brian R Smith wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>>>SuSE does come with a few helpful packages like mpich/lam and queuing
> >>>>>>software like OpenPBS, but in my experience, you are always better off
> >>>>>>following a more generic model: build it yourself.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>We were initially looking at SuSE because that is what we have 
> >>>>>everywhere else. :)
> >>>>
> >>>>Well, use SuSE on your cluster then, if that is the distro which you are
> >>>>most used to.
> >>>>Personally, I would shy away from Fedora, much though I have a liking
> >>>>for Redhat hand have used it for years.
> >>>>
> >>>>I agree with the advice though to build your own packages rather than
> >>>>relying on the RPMs.
> >>>>
> >>>>_______________________________________________
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> >> 
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> >>>
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> > 
> > -- 
> > Gerry Creager -- gerry.creager at tamu.edu
> > Texas Mesonet -- AATLT, Texas A&M University	
> > Cell: 979.229.5301 Office: 979.458.4020 FAX: 979.847.8578
> > Page: 979.228.0173
> > Office: 903A Eller Bldg, TAMU, College Station, TX 77843
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