14 DAY TRIAL // Scientific Linux (SL) 6.0 has been released. As the version number indicates, it's based on the latest Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.0 and sticks rather close to its source, apart from removing Red Hat-specific packages and artwork, but adds some packages of its own and implements some changes as well.
The emphasis for this release has been on cleaning up the various repositories and extra packages that have been offered so far, to make them easier to find as well as less confusing for users.
"External repositories often had the same packages that we added to Scientific Linux 5. To reduce duplicating efforts, reduce version and dependency problems, and create less confusion, we have reduced the number of extra packages we put in Scientific Linux 6," the release notes read.
"For SL6 the final release will only have the same packages that were originally released by TUV. All security and bugfix errata are in their respective repositories," it added.
"The SL contrib repository held extra drivers that weren't in the normal kernel. This effort was duplicated by repositories elrepo and atrpms. Instead of duplicating their efforts, we have made it easy to install their repositories," it continued.
Scientific Linux tries to stay as close to RHEL as possible. This is true for SL 6 as well, it boasts full compatibility with the upstream vendor (TUV) aka Red Hat.
The only things removed are the Red Hat branding and specific packages as well as artwork and some documentation. Some packages had to be modified to build with SL 6.0. These packages are clearly marked to make them distinguishable from the original ones.
However, some packages not found in RHEL 6.0 have been included in SL 6.0 for various reasons. Among them is the light-weight IceWM window manager, the OpenAFS distributed file system and others.
Scientific Linux 6.0 also comes with a small selection of tweaks, designed to improve upon RHEL 6.0, which are offered as separate packages to make them easy to install and uninstall.
Scientific Linux 6.0 is available for download here.