Hi everyone!

Seeing the different hosts that you use, I have a question for you! Why did you selected your OS? I have read that for example to use BOINC usually Linux systems are faster than Windows, but they aren't so much clear.

I ask it also because I usually use Ubuntu or Debian linux system and maybe in a future i will try other linux OS.

Let's talk about OS Best and worse points!

Hi everyone!

Seeing the different hosts that you use, I have a question for you! Why did you selected your OS? I have read that for example to use BOINC usually Linux systems are faster than Windows, but they aren't so much clear.

I ask it also because I usually use Ubuntu or Debian linux system and maybe in a future i will try other linux OS.

Let's talk about OS Best and worse points!

Nice idea. ^^

I use on my little "tower" Win 7 Pro, the reason: Gaming. My new computer will get Steam OS, but BOINC is not supported yet. Steam OS is nearly not-config-able (My last informations from the beta-test last year in an VM)

My notebook has Win 8.1...:( I don´t like theses OS. My tests to delete has failed...

My 2 vServers and one Hardware-Server are using Linux Ubuntu 12.04 with graphical surface. They are for online back-up´s and my ongoing BOINC-project(s).

At work and at home I tested some other OS´s, like Mint 15; 16; 17, Debian 7 and Q4OS-Beta (german Linux OS; still in BETA-mode)


Windows/Linux computing time

Well, thats not so easy to answer. Mostly Linux is faster than windows; e.g. NumberFields@Home [30% difference for the same task].
Some applications will run with nearly zero difference.
It always an question from used hardware and his age.

Aurel alias Dennis.

I don't select an OS to use for BOINC, I just use what happens to be on any given machine (actually, that's not quite true, see later).

I use Win XP 32-bit on nearly every machine, because that's what's already on the machine. I get most of my PCs free or very cheaply, so they are always old and probably wouldn't even work with a newer OS. I do have other machines with other OSs (Win7, Win8 64-bit) but they are reserved for other jobs and don't have BOINC on them.

I do run a couple of linux boxes just to play with, and to run BOINC projects with no Windows applications. I wouldn't normally run linux out of choice (haters gonna hate!) but I do like how quick and easy it is to install and get up and running compared to any version of Windows.

Speed comparisons between Windows and linux ... I did test this ages ago and found in general that there was very little difference in performance, but a few projects were much faster, and a couple were massively slower. On average there was about a 2% speed difference, with Windows being better. I currently have a box that was Win XP and is now running Ubuntu and again, generally, there is no advantage to either OS from the projects I've tested so far.

I prefer RHEL derivatives for private and professional use, because it is important for me to have as much practise as i can get.

Because i have decided to migrate the network i have to administrate away from Winodws within the next ~5-8 years, i have chosen one family of Linuxes and work with it whereever and whenever I am able to.

I decided to use RHEL derivatives because of the exzellent public documentations and the good support for the KVM virtualization infrastructure.
I need reliability and predictability (something that I even began to miss on Microsoft, because of such examples like the changed lifecycle for Windows 8), so i try to follow the Linux related decisions of the CERN in general.

I also use Windows boxes for gaming (and for my wife of course), prefering Windows 8.1 (with ClassicShell).

In my opinion, the BOINC performance of particular operating systems relies heavily on the specific applications.

But i guess, the future of BOINC is using virtual machines anyhow, although i think that the actual way of using VirtualBox is wrong.
It would be nice if projects would start to provide complete slim virtual machines for download, ready for use in KVM, VirtualBox, VM Ware and so on, completely with preconfigured OS, Libraries of the project developers choice.

I expect this would make providing different applications obsolete, and would make it possible to run the projects in the most efficient way.

Best, Dennis

P.S.: There are many Dennisses around on DENIS@home! :D

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"I should bring one important point to the attention of the authors and that is, the world is not the United States..."

As someone pointed out the efficiency is a function of what the project supplies for executables. On most projects it doesn't make that much difference. There are several projects that only have 32 bit Windows apps but also have 64 bit Linux. In these cases I've found Linux to be far better.

My machines are setup with dual boot Win/Linux. When I 1st start a new project I put 2 identical I7 machines on it and see which will grant higher credits per day. That of course is the OS that I select for that particular project.

There are some projects that are Windows only, like Gerasim, and some that are Linux only, like WEP and Bealf.

On this project I found that Linux (at least on my machines) outperforms Windows.

My machines are pure crunchers and do nothing except run BOINC so the OS to me is irrelevant ... whatever works best :)

I run Windows 7 64bit almost exclusively, I have tried running Ubuntu but always have trouble setting up the gpu's for Boinc usage. I have been using Windows since the early 80's so it's just easier for me, learning how to make Ubuntu do the same things is just not as intuitive for me at this point.

I too have found that which is faster, Linux or Windows, depends alot of the applications written by the project. Also in general 64bits apps are faster than 32bit apps.

I prefer RHEL derivatives for private and professional use, because it is important for me to have as much practise as i can get.

Me too., Actually I am running Red Hat Enterprise Linux release 8.7 (Ootpa), not a derivatave,

My first home computer ran Windows 95 and I hated it so much that I complained to my computer-knowledgeable nephew (an MIT student at the time) and he recommended Red Hat Linux 5 (current at the time), and it was so much better, and less buggy, and free that I got it. I cannot remember if it fit a floppy disk or a CD. But I added a hard drive to my machine and installed Linux on the new drive as a dual-boot system. I then went to RHL 5.2 on a new machine and later upgraded it to CentOS4.

I run RHEL on my last few machines. I like that it is supported for 10 years because I hate upgrades (although I to keep with the bug fixes).

$ uptime
16:38:49 up 28 days, 6:51, 1 user, load average: 12.07, 12.19, 12.58
$

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I prefer RHEL derivatives for private and professional use, because it is important for me to have as much practise as i can get.

Me too., Actually I am running Red Hat Enterprise Linux release 8.7 (Ootpa), not a derivatave,

My first home computer ran Windows 95 and I hated it so much that I complained to my computer-knowledgeable nephew (an MIT student at the time) and he recommended Red Hat Linux 5 (current at the time), and it was so much better, and less buggy, and free that I got it. I cannot remember if it fit a floppy disk or a CD. But I added a hard drive to my machine and installed Linux on the new drive as a dual-boot system. I then went to RHL 5.2 on a new machine and later upgraded it to CentOS4.

I run RHEL on my last few machines. I like that it is supported for 10 years because I hate upgrades (although I to keep with the bug fixes).

$ uptime
16:38:49 up 28 days, 6:51, 1 user, load average: 12.07, 12.19, 12.58
$

I run Windows 10 or 11 or Linux Mint or Ubuntu depending on the pc, some pc's just don't like Windows so they get Linux and run just fine and are also faster than machines with similar hardware running Windows. Windows seems to have alot more overhead than Linux does which I'm guessing means things happen faster when you click on them but since most of my pc's are just for crunching I don't care about that.

I use Debian wherever I can, stable and fast.

I have one Windows computer just for the odd program I might need for compatibility but doing an update on that today reminded me why I use Debian. My main archives are still on Windows, the one thing that Linux is missing is a good flexible backup program like SyncBack.

I used Ubuntu a few years ago and found it too unstable. I have better things to do with my time than debug OS problems and recover corrupted data.

Debian can be a bit dogmatic in its efforts to be stable but its gradually changing, the use of the non-free driver package as standard this time round has made install a lot tidier. We lost some programs in the latest update because they weren't classed as stable enough, if you need them you just hold off the update.

SSD prices are so cheap nowadays. For each of my dedicated (not for everyday personal use) DC rig, I have two SSDs, one for windows and linux (ubuntu) OS. I abandoned dual boot drive approach due to the need to reinstall one or the other OSes when something goes wrong (rarely but it still happens. Easier to reinstall the OS than troubleshooting). Could have gone with USB flash drive but depending on the projects, USB flash drive can struggle when it comes to high IO activity especially writing.

For DENIS specifically, I do see windows to be slightly faster than ubuntu by a few percent in terms of normalized pphr (points per hour). I didn't take good record of it.

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