CCL: best Linux for clusters

[Jon Wright <jon===gate.sinica.edu.tw>]

 Sent to CCL by: Jon Wright [jon*_*gate.sinica.edu.tw]
We've been firm users of scientific linux and have not had a problem
 with it at all. Close enough to RHEL that comerical packages such as
 CSD, InsightII etc work without a hitch. Compiling other software is
 usually painless as well.
 Being so close to RHEL it's usually easy to find fixes to any problems
 that do occur because thay have also happened in RHEL.
 Jon
>  From: Venable, Richard (NIH/NHLBI) E
>  venabler()nhlbi.nih.gov<owner-chemistry:ccl.net>
>  Subject: CCL: best Linux for clusters
>  To: "Han, Joseph "<jhh3851:yahoo.com>
>  Date: Friday, October 28, 2011, 12:02 PM
>  Sent to CCL by: "Venable, Richard (NIH/NHLBI) [E]"
>  [venabler#%#nhlbi.nih.gov]
>  We have been re-evaluating the choice of CentOS for our cluster, and would like
>  solicit comments on which freely available Linux flavor seems to be the best for
>  scientific computing, in terms of performance, stability, ease of
>  administration, and support for more commercial software (QM packages, Matlab,
>  etc.) and hardware (Qlogic Infiniband boards and driver software).
>  Besides CentOS, we are looking at Scientific Linux and Debian, but comments on
>  other distributions are welcome.  If you (or someone in your group) can provide
>  some detailed remarks noting good or bad features of specific Linux
>  distributions, please send them to me and I will summarize to the list.
>  Thank you.
>  --
>  Rick Venable     5635 FL/T906
>  Membrane Biophysics Section
>  NIH/NHLBI Lab. of Computational Biology
>  Bethesda, MD  20892-9314   U.S.A.
>  (301) 496-1905   venabler AT nhlbi*nih*gov