CERN Transitioning Computers To Debian After Being A Longtime RHEL Institution

原始链接: https://www.phoronix.com/news/CERN-Goes-Debian-Leaving-RHEL

CERN is transitioning its industrial accelerator-control computers from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to Debian. The primary catalyst for this shift was the introduction of the `-march=x86-64-v2` compiler flag in newer RHEL versions, which CERN views as "forced obsolescence." This requirement rendered some of their older, mission-critical hardware—some over 15 years old—incompatible. Commenters on Hacker News generally support the move, noting that CERN is responsibly managing its budget by extending the lifespan of functional, legacy hardware. It is important to note that this migration is limited to control systems; CERN’s data centers and experimental computing environments will continue to utilize RHEL and AlmaLinux. Some technical users suggested that alternative distributions like Gentoo could have offered even greater flexibility regarding compiler flags, but the move to Debian marks a significant shift for the long-time RHEL-based institution.

原文

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, besides being well known for its Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is known among longtime Linux users as a RHEL/CentOS shop. CERN formally even co-maintained the Scientific Linux RHEL derivative with other educational/research institutions in the past. So to much surprise now, CERN is transitioning to Debian Linux for industrial accelerator-control computers.

CERN talked about this exciting news at the MiniDebConf that took place in Winterthur, Switzerland this past weekend. CERN had used their RHEL-derived Scientific Linux for about a decade prior to moving to CentOS in 2015. Now after a decade with CentOS, they are moving on and embracing Debian for a portion of their systems.

CERN going Debian

CERN engineers had considered moving to CentOS Stream as a more natural pathway but ultimately they say "the straw that broke the camel's back" to abandon Red Hat Enterprise Linux for their industrial accelerator-control computers was the "-march=x86-64-v2" compiler flag default as "forced obsolescence" for old hardware.

CERN Debian challenges

Among the challenges they have faced though in their Debian on-boarding is the lack of standard tooling for automated building and publishing of packages - a lot of gaps in the official tooling. There are also a number of tools not supporting multiple versions of the same packages.

CERN is planning by the end of 2026 to have all 2,200+ of their industrial computers and embedded systems running Debian 13. Those wishing to learn more can see this video presentation (AV1 WebM) from the MiniDebConf.

Update: CERN has clarified that their focus with the migration is on their industrial accelerator-control computers while data centers and experimental computing remain on RHEL/AlmaLinux.