I have been running BOINC 5.8.15 on 5 Win2K PCs and running BOINC 5.4.11 on 2 Ubuntu 7.04 PCs. I started running Seti@Home before BOINC and had never installed any other clients until recently when Seti's server crashed and had no work the past week. I installed Rosetta@Home because I like what you are doing, and my Celeron 500MHz PCs with 256MB of RAM will run your client.

I am getting messages on my 2 Ubuntu Linux PCs that there is a new 5.8.16 version of BOINC. I installed these using the Synaptic package manager for Ubuntu and I cannot find a 5.8.16 package for Synaptic. If I try to manually download the newer 5.8.16 version and install it manually, it does not replace the current version, it installs an second copy.

Should I leave the Rosetta@Home client running on my Ubuntu PCs with the 5.4.11 BOINC, will it cause problems for Rosetta@Home? Installing the version I have was so easy, and the problems I see reported online with the manual install makes me not want to try to uninstall the Synaptic package and reinstall manually since the current version is working for Seti okay.

Should I ignore the message from Rosetta@Home about the newer client and leave it running on the 5.4.11, or should I remove Rosetta@Home from my Ubuntu boxes for now?


For Seti, I am a team member for the "STARFLEET International Star Trek Fan Association". There was no STARFLEET Team for Rosetta@Home, so I have started one. If you are a Star Trek Fan and not already in a team, please join our team.

Thank you,
Greg

The 5.8.x clients have some nice improvements over the 5.4.x clients, however there is probably not a compelling reason to upgrade if you would rather wait for your package vendor to post the new version. I would email them and ask if they would update the package.

---

BOINC WIKI

BOINCing since 2002/12/8

Thank you for this help. I'm fairly indifferent to how the application looks as long as it is getting the job done. I wanted to make sure that I was not causing problems for the project if my old version of the BOINC client was causing errors on the Rosetta@Home server side. As long as it is running and not broke, I'm inclined to leave it alone until the Synaptic package is available for the update.

For me the package is not a rush, but if a new version could be prepared for the Ubuntu 7.04 release, it might help get more users as the Ubuntu 7.04 release is getting lots of new press, attention, and users. The Rosetta client was attached by the 5.4.11 BOINC client without any problems or confusion. The package description for the 5.4.11 BOINC client does not mention any of the non-Seti projects, so a updated description could attract attention for other projects.

Many people that are using Ubuntu are using in on machines with less RAM and disk space, so Rosetta would be a good project for them. I had been running SETI@HOME for a few years before BOINC was first released. When BOINC was released, the first project I tried after SETI, was the Climate Prediction project. It needed so much disk space, I could not run it, so I gave up and just ran SETI. Many new Ubuntu users trying BOINC, may have a similar experience and simply give up and not run any projects.

There are several places where people have put together what the hardware requirements are for the different projects, but they are not very readable by non-geeks. Something simple in the Wikipedia Boinc page would be helpful for novices, such as "try these projects if you have a old PC with less RAM and DASD, and try these others if you've got a really fast new PC."

While a new fast multi-core PC can crunch faster, older PCs can still make a big contribution. I recently bought 5 old Compaq IPAQ thin clients, with 500 MHz Celeron CPU, 256 RAM, and 4 GB DASD. I bought these on eBay for $100 total including shipping. I was bored and wanted to play with LINUX, but did not want to mess up my regular desktop running WinXP by trying to dual boot. Paying $100 for the hardware and getting the sofware for free from Ubuntu seemed like a fairly cheap hobby to keep my busy for a good while. These little guys have worked their way through more than 4000 work units credits in less than a month. The PCs already had Win2K, so I installed BOINC on 3 of them and let them start being productive right away, while I played with Ubuntu on 2 of them.

Getting new BOINC client software packages ready to be installed with the new Ubuntu releases might hard to keep up to date. An easier way might be to have a BOINC repository to which Synaptic could attach. This is fairly easy change in Synaptic. I'm a retired programmer, but a Linux novice, so I'm not any help putting together the packages. If somebody could put the packages together for Synaptic, I would be willing to write up instructions for a web page to tell other novices how to add a BOINC repository to Synaptic to install the BOINC upgrades and projects. I don't know how hard the packages are to put together, but the packages for the individual projects are not really needed badly, since the GUI BOINC manager makes it fairly simple to attach the projects after you get it installed.

Getting the BOINC client first installed without using the Synaptic package, is far from easy for a Linux novice. From what I've seen on the boards, the biggest problem for new Linux users trying to install BOINC, is the installation of the BOINC Manager using the command line. During my 20 years of IS experience, I worked on more than a dozen different operating systems, but the installation of the BOINC client on LINUX from the command line in far from simple for Linux novice users that don't understand the permission systems and directory structure for LINUX.

If someone can put together the Synaptic package for the BOINC 5.8.16 client, I will test it and try to write up instructions for other Linux novices.

Thanks again for your help and info,
Greg