This paper investigates the cluster synchronization for network of linear systems via a generalized pinning control strategy which allows the network of each cluster to take relaxed topological structure. For the case with fixed topology, it is shown that a feasible feedback controller can be designed to achieve the given cluster synchronization pattern if the induced network topology of each cluster has a directed spanning tree and further compared to the couplings among different clusters, the couplings within the each cluster are sufficiently strong. An extra balanced condition is imposed on the network topology of each cluster to allow for the cluster synchronization under arbitrary switching network topologies. Such a balanced condition can be removed via the use of dwell-time technique. For all the cases, the lower bounds for such strengths of couplings within each cluster that secure the synchronization as well as cluster synchronization rate are explicitly specified. Finally, some illustrative examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the theoretical findings. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.