The new version of Scientific Linux 7.7 has already been released

Recently the launch of the new version of the distribution "Scientific Linux 7.7" was presented, a distribution that is built on the basis of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.7 package and complemented by tools focused on use in scientific institutions.

For those unfamiliar with Scientific Linux, they should know that this is a Linux distribution binary level clone of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution, compiled from RHEL source code, under the terms of the RHEL EULA and the GPL license. It is maintained by the CERN, Fermilab, DESY and ETH Zürich laboratories.

The differences regarding RHEL they generally boil down to rebranding and removal of links to Red Hat services. Application-specific applications, as well as additional drivers, are provided for installation from external repositories such as EPEL and elrepo.org.

At first the project was baptized as High Energy Physics Linux, and was renamed Scientific Linux since it was widely adopted by the scientific community in general.

This distribution is used in the Large Hadron Collider, for the machines of the GCH computer network.

Scientific Linux 7.7 Key New Features

In this new version of the distribution, it is emphasized that the components (shim, grub2, the Linux kernel) used when booting in UEFI Secure Boot mode are signed with the Scientific Linux key, which, when enabling verified boot, requires manual operations, as the key must be added to the firmware.

To install updates automatically, the yum-cron system is used instead of yum-autoupdate.

By default, updates are applied automatically followed by a notification to the user. To change the behavior at the stage of an automated installation, the packages are prepared SL_yum-cron_no_automated_apply_updates (prohibits automatic installation of updates) and SL_yum-cron_no_default_excludes (enables the installation of updates with the kernel).

While for files with external repository settings (EPEL, ELRepo, SL-Extras, SL-SoftwareCollections, ZFSonLinux) have been moved to a centralized repositoryas these repositories are not specific to specific versions and can be used with any version of Scientific Linux 7.

To download data from repositories, just run

yum install yum-conf-repos

Y after this configure the individual repositories, For example:

yum install yum-conf-epel yum-conf-zfsonlinux yum-conf-softwarecollections yum-conf-hc yum-conf-extras yum-conf -elrepo

Also in Scientific Linux 7.7 we can find that a package was added with OpenAFS, an open implementation of the Andrew File System distributed file system.

Changes have been made to the packages, mainly related to the rebranding: anaconda, dhcp, grub2, httpd, ipa, kernel, libreport, PackageKit, pesign, plymouth, redhat-rpm-config, shim, yum, cockpit.

Compared to Scientific Linux 6.x, the packages alpine, SL_desktop_tweaks, SL_password_for_singleuser, yum-autoupdate, yum-conf-adobe, thunderbird (available in the EPEL7 repository) are excluded from the basic structure.

Of the other notable changes In the announcement of the new version, we find the following:

• Package added SL_gdm_no_user_list, which disables the display of the user list in GDM if it is necessary to comply with a stricter security policy
• Package added SL_enable_serialconsole to configure a console that works through a serial port
• Package added SL_no_colorls which disables color output in ls

If you want to know a little more about the news of this release, you can consult them in the following link

Download Scientific Linux 7.7

If you want to download the image from this system to be able to install on your computer or to be able to test under a virtual machine, You must go to the official website of the distribution and in its download section you will get the system image.

In that download section you can download the image with desktop environment or the other image that is to build the system to your needs.

The distribution image is supplied for the x86_64 architecture, in the form of DVD packages (9.8 GB and 8 GB), as well as a shortened image for network installation (496 MB).

The link of download is this.