Scientific Linux 4.4

october 12, 2006

Scientific Linux 4.4 was released a few days ago and I finally got a chance to check it out.  I installed it yesterday in a VMware virtual machine and took a quick peek.  Scientific Linux is another RHEL rebuild project that does not aim to be completely alike with RHEL.  They have added their own stuff to the distro, but keeps pretty close to RHEL.  It is nice that they have added things like Intel wifi drivers, MadWifi drivers and programs like pine. The installation process was kind of jarring.  The bootup and startup screens were very professional.  I really like how they look and feel.  But, when the installation actually starts copying files to the harddrive...well, that's when the warm and fuzzies start.  There are warm and fuzzy pictures of kittens, dogs, birds and landscapes that rotate throughout the installation.  Very...different. I like how the Gnome installation goes more "Gnome" than "Scientific Linux".  The biggest indicator is the fact that they use the Gnome foot icon for the Main Menu instead of some customized logo.  I'll have to play with it more, but I think the experience will be about on par with CentOS 4.4.  Unless CentOS stops producing their rebuild, I am going to stick with it (I haven't reinstalled the main OS on my notebook in about a month now, I'm quite proud of myself).  CentOS has a tighter and faster release schedule than Scientific Linux.


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