Vista or Linux?

[Impaler]

Hi ppl :-)

Have any one of you any meaning on which operating system is the best for crunching? I am currently running BOINC on 2 machines, both on Windows Vista 64bit. One is a Opteron 185, the other is a Phenom 9850BE. I am also currently putting together some old parts with a 2600+ Tbred.

Is there any gains to be made, vice versa?.. 1%?..5%..none?

Suggestions?

Keep up the good work!!

[NeoGen]

I'm still on XP and I love it. But I believe that for a simple and pure crunching machine you could squeeze more performance from a lightweight linux distro than from a cpu-and-memory-hog like Vista.
I strongly believe it but I can't guarantee it, as I have never tried crunching for real on either Vista or Linux.

[liuqyn]

the only linux box I have is a pain in the butt, but being a ps3 is probably partly to blame. good cruncher but hard to get it setup. as for vista, the laptop I currently use on the road has vista installed, seams to crunch "ok" except for random lock ups that I am sure are vista related.

[Impaler]

Ok..I'll be trying a Linux distro on one of them soon.. Any suggestions? Fedora? Mandrake? Suse?

[NeoGen]

For pure crunching, I'd say the lightest you can find... one of those that can run on a USB pen even.
But then again I don't know what else you might be using the machines for. My definition of "Pure crunching" is just a box crunching away with no monitor, keyboard and mouse. No hard drive is required even in some cases.
But Lan connection is essential for remote access.

But I'm going to the extreme here.
Don't try my crazy idea if you plan to use the puter for something more than crunching.

[Impaler]

Thx for the tips! :-)

[drezha]

I believe you wont get much on increase it all. I've run PC's on Linux and XP and had no gains for using one or the other UNLESS the project offers optimised clients for one of the other. However these aren't that common but generally rely on you having a 64 bit OS.

One such project is ABC@home. Using a 64 bit OS and 64 bit CPU can almost double your output. And it's a LOT easier to setup a 64 bit linux version. I went for Ubuntu.

[Impaler]

wow.! Thank's for the information Drezha.. :-)

Just got SUSE Linux 11, gonna give it a go first..do acouple of test runs, see what happens :-)

[Brucifer]

I'm running mine on opensuse 10.3

[Impaler]

I'm running mine on opensuse 10.3

Ok..no serious problems? Do you think SUSE will have support for 9850BE and M3A32-MVP?