I've been using Linux for years and I can tell you that there is no difference in performance between different distributions. Whatever difference there may be is chalked up to what version of GCC was used to compile the packages in that distro. What that wikipedia article claims is pure biased nonsense. I don't recommend Mint because it's simply Ubuntu remixed according to Mint's vision, without security patches and timely updates of the main Ubuntu repos.

You don't have to kill the GUI to get the most out of processing -- simply switching to a different TTY session with ctrl + alt + F1 is enough. In Ubuntu, the GUI TTY is ctrl + alt + F7. I'd also like to recommend a program named 'boinctui' which gives you a command-line user interface for managing BOINC. I personally prefer using this over BOINC Manager.

Running commands on Linux isn't nearly as complicated as you think it is. In the case of Ubuntu, upgrades are a matter of running 'sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y'. Many users simply alias those two commands to an alias named 'update' so that when they type 'update' into the terminal, it will automatically update/upgrade.

I do not understand, why nobody at WCG sees the enormous power of GPU processing.Why are you wasting (not using) this resource?

BTW, if CERN/LHC starts running theirs on GPU such as Test4Theory, the programming nut will have been cracked, to include getting the intermediate data from storage to GPGPU and back. To quote a GPGPU coding outfit "Copying of large quantities of data to and from a device is relatively slow".

I agree, it is off topic. Sorry. I wish there was a Linux forum, like they have for Android. You are also right about Linux not being for non-techies. This is why millions of users like I have remained Windows users, and likely will continue to be so.

That doesn't really explain why millions of 'non-techies' are fine with using Ubuntu. If you were to ask me, GNOME 3 is the simplest desktop environment to use on Linux -- designed for people like you.

https://camo.githubusercontent.com/34597cd88f...02d643773377963782e6a7067

That said, Ubuntu's default desktop environment -- Unity -- is still much simpler than Windows and offers a powerful feature, the Unity HUD, which is accessible by pressing Alt.