RHEL-based Scientific Linux 6.0 released

The developers of Scientific Linux have released version 6.0 of their Linux distribution for x86-32 and x86-64 systems. Mainly driven by Fermilab, CERN and other universities and research institutes, the project provides a free clone of the subscription only Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). To make it available for free, protected components (such as Red Hat trademarks) were removed from RHEL's freely accessible sources; in addition, the software was recompiled for installation media to ensure that Scientific Linux retains all of the well-known functions included in RHEL 6.0.

RHEL 6.0 was itself only published in November of last year. Scientific Linux was completed a bit faster than the RHEL clone known as the CentOS project, which was just released as version 4.9, with CentOS 5.6 soon to follow. However, no date has been specified for version 6.0 of CentOS. Scientific Linux has generally contained more changes and additional packages than CentOS; as a result, the former differs from its Red Hat model more than the latter. Nonetheless, the makers of both distributions promise full compatibility with RHEL.

In the release notes for version 6.0, the developers of Scientific Linux explain that version 6.0 contains far fewer add-ons than previous versions; many of the packages previously included are now available in such add-on repositories as EPEL, and the goal is reportedly to prevent problems, confusion, and redundant work. The add-ons in SL (as the distribution is also known) include the Icewm window manager and the OpenAFS distributed file system. The release notes mention a number of other add-ons and also list the differences between the new version and Scientific Linux 5, along with the changes to the RHEL sources.

(crve)