Even though I love Fedora, I can't live without the classic Gnome 2.X.. I need an OS that has a longer life cycle.
I've googled Scientific Linux and CentOS got the feeling they were very similiar in terms of usability, security, etc.

Which of the two would work best in terms of installing codecs, VLC, Codeblocks, etc. I basically want to know which one is more compatable with Fedora's repository.

Thanks,
Jesse

You can't go wrong with any of them. My pick - I'm already using Scientific Linux since 5.5 version.

Regards.

Download a Live CD and take it for a test drive!

My experience was that CentOS is pretty much a straight-ahead clone of Red Hat, while Scientific has a little bit of its own "flavor."

In terms of VLC, codecs, etc. check out here: http://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalRes...ries/RPMForge/

Thank you so much for your feedback.

I just would like to now which is more flexible with 3rd party repositories ? I work with codeblocks,ninja-ide, tomboy notes, libre office.

For that, there is really no difference. Both are built from RHEL sources that are unmodified except for removing trademarks and replacing artwork. Of the two, CentOS is "more identical" to RHEL, since the team makes the effort to duplicate whatever build environment was used by RH to compile each package, making the result bit-for-bit identical to the corresponding RHEL binaries. AFAICT, the SL folks don't figure out, for example, what version of the C compiler was used to compile the RHEL package and use that same compiler version for their own package.

There are also some differences in update philosophy. With CentOS, if you install version 6.0 and just continue to apply updates as they are released, you'll find yourself being automatically upgraded to each successive point release (6.1, 6.2, ...). With SL, unless you make changes to the update configuration you will remain on version 6.0 with only security-related updates (and their dependencies) until you specifically ask to upgrade to a subsequent point release ("yum --releasever=6.2 ...").

About the only other difference is that Scientific Linux includes some additional packages not found in RHEL. You can find a summary of those at http://distrowatch.com/table.php?dis...ion=scientific.

I would assume they are 99.9% equally flexible since they are 99.9% identical.

Be sure to read here before you add any 3rd party repos: http://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalRes.../Repositories/

I found that CentOS has rather more hardware support than Scientific Linux. Remember that SL is produced at CERN for themselves and Fermilab; they let us use it, but it's produced for their needs, not ours.