About

Scientific Linux is a Fermilab sponsored project.  Our primary user base is within the High Energy and High Intensity Physics community.  However, our users come from a wide variety of industries with various use cases all over the globe – and sometimes off of it!

Our Mission: Driven by Fermilab’s scientific mission and focusing on the changing needs of experimental facilities, Scientific Linux should provide a world class environment for scientific computing needs.

Our Goals:

  •     Provide a stable, scalable, and extensible operating system for scientific computing
  •     Support scientific research by providing methods and procedures for enabling the integration of scientific applications with the operating environment
  •     Use the free exchange of ideas, designs, and implementations to prepare a computing platform for the next generation of scientific computing

Scientific Linux is a rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (property of Red Hat Inc NYSE:RHT).  We informally call them “The Upstream Vendor” or “TUV”.  Our references to TUV are intended to make it clear that Scientific Linux is in no way affiliated, supported, or sanctioned by upstream.  By not using their name we hope to make this distinction as clear as possible.

We wish to note for the record: TUV has not tried to hinder the development Scientific Linux.

TUV has been a faithful partner with the Open Source community at large.  We hold them in the highest regard.  Our FAQ covers our feelings about TUV in greater detail.

For more information see our pages: