CentOS6 based 5107R/5108R ISOs

Posted by: mstauber Category: General

Due to popular demand CentOS-6.2 based versions of BlueOnyx 5107R and 5108R have been released today.

Thanks to sponsorship from VIRTBIZ Internet Services and Einden Studio BlueOnyx 5107R and 5108R are now also available on CentOS-6.2. From now on we will release updated ISO images of these two versions of BlueOnyx both on Scientific Linux as well as on CentOS.

The ISO images can be found at the usual download locations.

Newest 5108R versions:

  • BlueOnyx-5108R-SL-6.2-20120401.iso
  • BlueOnyx-5108R-CentOS-6.2-20120410.iso

Newest 5107R versions:

  • BlueOnyx-5107R-SL-6.2-20120401.iso
  • BlueOnyx-5107R-CentOS-6.2-20120410.iso

Newest 5106R version:

  • BlueOnyx-5106R-CentOS-5.8-20120406.iso

Naturally this raises the questions what the differences between the CentOS-6.2 based and Scientific Linux 6.2 based BlueOnyx 5107R or 5108R are. Below you will find some more information that may allow you to form your own opinion about which one to choose:

Scientific Linux or CentOS based 5108R/5107R?

This is a somewhat loaded question. Technically and in an ideal world it wouldn't make much of a difference. You will have a hard time to spot differences between a CentOS based and a Scientific Linux based BlueOnyx.

Software compiled and built for RHEL6, CentOS6 or SL6 will run on each of the other platforms without recompile. All things considered they are binary compatible and technically it therefore really makes no difference whatsoever which one you choose. In fact you could easily turn a CentOS6 based BlueOnyx into a Scientific Linux 6 based box and vice versa - by just replacing the "centos-release" RPM with the "sl-release" RPM - and vice versa.

Advantage CentOS: The CentOS distribution has a much better recognition and publicity due to ancient historical achievements - laurels on which they may have rested idly for way too long. Still: From a point of marketing an ISP will have an easier time to get his new clients to embrace a CentOS based distribution, because the clients may already know CentOS.

Advantage Scientific Linux: Scientific Linux is a Linux release put together by Fermilab, CERN, and various other labs and universities around the world. Its primary purpose is to reduce duplicated effort of the labs, and to have a common install base for the various experimenters. Like CentOS they also take the latest RHEL5 and RHEL6 sources and rebuild them for their own distribution. However, instead of volunteers they have a permanent team of developers tasked to keep the distribution up to date. This is basically your tax money at work.

The verdict: It has to be said very clearly that the Scientific Linux maintainers do a much better job than the CentOS maintainers. Typically Scientific Linux releases new major and minor versions of their RHEL clones months ahead of CentOS. Plus their clones are more complete and include tools which the CentOS team doesn't bother to include. Such as Revisor, the glib library and other bits and pieces. Typically a Scientific Linux box receives patches several weeks - sometimes months - ahead of an identical CentOS version. THAT is defenitely a major advantage.

Staying ahead of vulnerabilities is very important for anyone running a server connected to the internet.

So Team BlueOnyx highly recommends to use Scientific Linux instead of CentOS wherever possible.


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Apr 10, 2012 Category: General Posted by: mstauber
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