[luau] scientific linux?

[Charles Lockhart]

I guess I'm not a real big experimenter, I've mostly stuck to RedHat over
these last few years.  But it seems like RH is mostly oriented towards
workstations, desktops, servers.  And most of what I do is
science/instrumentation oriented.

I see a lot of scientific software and instrumentation software, but I
don't see much in terms of a community supported distribution oriented
specifically towards science/instrumentation*.  Does anybody know of one?
Or have an opinion regarding what distribution would be optimal for this
kind of thing?

I guess the motivation in my mind is that a lot of groups that do science
that requires instrumentation (that involves computing) have a hard time
finding a real straightforward solution.  Many are already trying to
coggle together COTS components into an instrument, and it seems odd that
with all these flavors of Linux out there that there wouldn't be one for
this kind specific of task.

* I realize that there are instrumentation oriented Linux products, from
monta vista, rtlinux, etc., but I was thinking of something more "free".

-Charles