Best OS for F@H4

G

grethor

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 1, 2004
Messages
188
I'm setting up a dedicated folding box and I'm wondering what is the best OS to use?

Here are my choices:

1) Windows XP/2000
2) Windows 9x
3) Some Linux distro ( probably Debian or Slackware )
4) FreeBSD 5.x
 
grethor said:
I'm setting up a dedicated folding box and I'm wondering what is the best OS to use?

Here are my choices:

1) Windows XP/2000
2) Windows 9x
3) Some Linux distro ( probably Debian or Slackware )
4) FreeBSD 5.x
Click to expand...

I believe XP has proven to be the fastest, although I've never tried it on Linux.
 
i'd be inclined to say linux is the fastest... i think it uses the least overhead and is generally faster with cpu-intensive tasks. but i've never seen any benchmarks comparing the various OS options, and i'd guess that the difference is not significant enough to matter.

 
My Linux folding boxes are always at 97 to 99% usage for FAH depends on what else i am doing on that box. I always use SUSE 8.2 as it seems to be easier to get everything found and working than Fedora, or Mandrake 9.1 or 10, of course it couldbe that I am more familiar with it [ymmv]. Knoppix is really easy but I prefer the way SUSE loads. ALL of them are going to give you excellant results.
 
I "drag raced" my XP box and My FreeBSD box and the got pretty even results. They were both able to crank out a 3 min frame time. On my dedicated folding box, I think im gonna use console FreeBSD cause of it's low overhead and it's superior reliability over XP.
 
They can all be good choices and will all perform close enough that you'll probably never be able to tell the difference in your WU production. The only one with with any real shortcoming as far as folding goes is Win9x since it won't run forever without an occasional reboot - although I had a Windows95 machine that folded for 3 months straight one time. There are no reliability problems with XP or 2000, so use 'em if you got 'em.
 
i'd be inclined to say Linux, isn't Turmelle's guide for a diskless farm based on Linux..? must be for a reason...

also, it just seems that a Linux machine would be less likely to randomly fsck up and require a reboot..rendering it not-folding :(

also, i agree w/ the lower overhead mentionned, it seems for long-term folding/stability Linux should be the way to go...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top