14 DAY TRIAL // Scientific Linux 7.0 RC, a Linux distribution built by Fermilab and various universities from around the world, has been launched and is available for testing. The developers are getting closer to the final release, which should arrive pretty soon.
Scientific Linux is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and follows the same version number. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.0 was released a few months ago and it was based on Fedora 19. It's not the newest system available right now, but the focus of both RHEL and Scientific Linux is stability and nothing else.
The Scientific Linux operating system has been around for a long time, but the releases are few and far between. This is not a bad thing, and it shows that the scientific community doesn't really need the bleeding edge when it comes to operating systems.
Upstream is king
The Scientific Linux 7.0 RC developers have pulled numerous packages from upstream and that can be easily observed from the release notes. It's unclear, for now, if another Release Candidate will be necessary, but we'll just have to wait and see if the current version has a good reception.
"Fermilab's intention is to continue the development and support of Scientific Linux and refine its focus as an operating system for scientific computing. Today we are announcing a release candidate of Scientific Linux 7. We continue to develop a stable process for generating and distributing Scientific Linux, with the intent that Scientific Linux remains the same high quality operating system the community has come to expect."
"The 'everything' dvd image requires a Dual-Layer (DL) compatible drive for both burning and booting off of. Alternatively the livecd-iso-to-disk utility is able to convert this to USB successfully. A USB device of sufficient size is required. Alternatively you can utilize the dd command to write the raw image to a USB device," note the developers in the official announcement.
The developers also explain that there is still a small problem with the UEFI boot, which works but hasn't been completed. It's possible to boot Scientific Linux 7.0 RC with Secure Boot enabled, but it may not function in secure boot environments because the certificates haven't been signed yet by the UEFI CA.
You can download Scientific Linux 7.0 RC right now from Softpedia, but this is not a Live image. If you want to test this release you will need to install it, but please don't use a production machine.