Scientific Linux 7.3

It may surprise some of you to hear that not many of our readers are high-energy physicists (or high energy anything for that matter), so why are we including a distro called Scientific Linux on the cover disc this month? Despite the name, and the birthplace, of this distro, it is a good generalpurpose desktop distro. That’s hardly surprising as it is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), a distro that comes with all the backing and support of the friendly giant Red Hat, inc and a price tag to match. While RHEL is commercial, it is still open source so other distros can be built on it, and this is what the (extremely) clever folks at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory have done.

The result of their work is a rock solid generalpurpose distro with a focus on stability rather than supplying cutting edge versions of software. If you are looking to gain experience of the type of Linux used in business, whether to enhance your career prospects or out of plain curiosity, Scientific Linux is a good choice of learning platform.

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