Scientific Linux 6.0 - A treat to scientific community.

Scientific Linux (SL) 6.0 produced by Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). It is the latest release of a Red Hat-based distribution specifically developed to meet the needs of the scientific computing community. This release is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.0 like CentOS, compiled from source.
SL 6.0 includes a number of tools, including Eclipse 3.5.2, Gnu Emacs, OpenJDK, and both Qt3 and Qt4. Python 2.6.5 is the default version installed along with gcc 4.4.4. You can install other languages using the normal Add/Remove Software tool from the System / Administration menu. Certain choices added that were not present in the predecessor 5.0 are

•      Standard Gnome desktop    
•      Minimal Desktop (this will give you a light Gnome with little more than Firefox, Nautilus file manager and the Terminal)
•      Basic Server (511 packages, a cli server setup)
•      Database Server (525 packages, cli setup)
•      Web Server (612 packages, cli setup)
•      Virtual Host (554 packages, cli only by default)
•      Software Development Workstation (Emacs, Eclipse, OpenJDK, VMM)
•      Web Development Workstation (Emacs, Eclipse, OpenJDK)
•      Minimal (206 packages only, cli only)

it also provides additional packages not found in the upstream product, the most notable among these are various file systems, including Cluster Suite and Global File System (GFS), FUSE, OpenAFS, Squashfs and Unionfs, wireless networking support with Intel wireless firmware, MadWiFi and NDISwrapper, Sun Java and Java Development Kit (JDK), the lightweight IceWM window manager, R - a language and environment for statistical computing, and the Alpine email client.
The new version is fast and smooth on 512MB.