Yes, it looks as though it could well be a very busy time for the techs - what with DDDT2 to juggle around with, CEP2 for Windows/Mac, this new project and HFCC soon to be coming back into the mix... Not forgetting, of course, the fact that they've also got 4 other ongoing projects to keep in check.

Fun (and hectic) times indeed

waiting for CEP2 while working on my other badges.

no reason for me to change my computers out of windows i can wait

also good to hear about the next project out there .. of corse would love to know more about the project

oh well hope i can catch some of these rumored beta's for windows

It's really not that hard to run Boinc on Linux. For the occasion I'm running Kubuntu in VMWare so I can still use Windows. In VMWare you can install an OS like you would as it's on a normal HD without losing data on your HD or creating partitions or whatever intrusive stuff. VMWare will create a virtual HD, which is actually just a file and will leave your HD architecture alone. Installing most popular Linux distros is like installing Windows, just click yes and ok when asked ;) If you have a computer in spare you can directly install Linux, if not you can use VMWare. Installing directly on HD or VMware works just the same, except for a HD install you'll need to burn the iso to CD /DVD and boot and install from there. To use VMWare, just download VMWare player and install it in Windows and download a popular Linux LiveCD (like Ubuntu). Be careful with downloading 64 bit iso's when you want to use a VM as many 64 bit CPU's don't support virtualizations of 64 bit environments (you should look in the data sheet of your CPU to check if it does), but if you try and your processor doesn't support it, you'll be notified right away when you try to install the OS (at last, with me it did), and the download was a waste of time (and bandwidth) and you must still must download the x86 version, because when you try to run the 64 bit version after install it will just hang.

To create a VMWare image, start VMWare Player and choose to create a new Virtual Machine. In the next screen choose the second option and point to the iso you downloaded. In the next screen make sure you assign enough virtual disk space and in the next screen again click the Customize Hardware button to choose the number of cores and the amount of memory you'd like assign to this VM image. Don't use all your available memory, my experience is that this will result in errors when crunching. I've set it to about 75% of the available memory for my dual core with 4GB. But you can change these settings anytime when the VM is not running, so nothing can go wrong and experimenting is allowed. I'm behind a router and have to set the Network Adapter to NAT to be able to connect to the internet with the VM, but this may be different for other configurations (apparently you will need to use bridged for your VM to connect to your local network and use BoincView or BoincTasks, but I haven't yet been able to establish such a connection, and a bridge will make your VM lose the internet connection). Now click Finish and the LiveCD will load. When done, on the Linux desktop you'll find a shortcut to install Linux. Click it and off you go.

When Linux is installed you need to find some software/package/update function in the menu (located in the same place as the "start"-menu in Windows) to be sure your installation is up-to-date. This may take a while. Then you'll need to find the package manager possibly the same you used to update) and do a search for Boinc in the search box. Various items will show up, but you'll only need to install both the Boinc-client and Boinc-manager. When done, search for the Boinc shortcut in the menu and run Boinc. I believe by default the Boinc-client always runs as daemon (like a service in Windows), so every time you start the VM-image, the client will start automatically. To view the Boinc manager, use the Boinc shortcut and you can close it without stopping the client in the background. The manager is the same as in Windows, so there should be nothing new here.

Things can be somewhat different for different distros/desktop environments as far as updating and installing software packages is concerned. The utils to use have different names and can be located in different places in the menus, so this "guide" is pretty generic, but the descriptions in the menus will tell you what to use most of the time. Just browse though them and you'll find out. It's not something someone with a normal intelligence can't do (my middle name is certainly not Einstein) and it will definitely not take weeks to get Boinc running in Linux ;)

If you want to run Linux in VMWare you can also download a pre-installed VMWare-image from the VMWare site or from somewhere else on the internet, but these downloads and installs are not smaller, unless you'll be able to find a minimal install and you'll still need to install Boinc yourself and as you can see, creating your own image is pretty simple , so why not just do that. For some people this can be fun as well...


Good luck,
Bart

We, the users, whose machine cycles are being used, do, but that doesn't seem to be the priority of those in charge, or they'd fix the RC=0x4 bug.

That's the most frustrating part of WCG, for me. The development cycle of
* alpha test
* beta test
* go to production even when beta test bugs haven't been fixed, so long as the bugs don't affect too many users

In one sense, I'm proud to say that I've never worked somewhere as sloppy is this. In another sense, maybe it would be better if I had, because I'd be more accepting of it.

Wubi looks interesting, but it doesn't run Ubuntu as a Windows application. It doesn't do any formatting of the hard drive and runs from a kind of virtual Linux drive in the shape of a file, but you can't run both Windows and Linux at the same time as it installs a dual boot . It's either Windows or Ubuntu.

What to chose really depends on what you're planning to do with that computer after CEP2 has come up with a Win app and if you need that computer with Windows while running Boinc/CEP2 during the Linux-only stage.
In the web installer from the Wubi site it seems you can choose what environment you want to install (Gnome, KDE or Xfce), but when I wanted to test it the installer said there was no disk in E:. That's a bit strange as that's a DVD and not a HD. But Wubi can also be installed from the official U-/K-/Xubuntu Live CD, but then only with the flavor you downloaded. Wubi.exe is in the root of the Live CD.

So plenty of choice for those people willing to run CEP2 already, but so far only have Windows. There are no more excuses not to give Linux a try ;)

Bart