Bitcoin Forum

Hello everyone,

Im debating which OS to use as my platform. Do you guys prefer Ubuntu or Windows xp? Any recommendations would be great. Also want to add this on my USB drive rather than a hard drive.

Thanks in advance.

I prefer windows, since it is easy to setup and easy to upgrade, though Ubuntu is likely a better choice in terms of resource use.

You could try to roll your own XP build just for bitcoin, use nLite http://www.nliteos.com/ to cut down on whatever you don't need for bitcoining.

For sure, Linux. Say no with dummy VGA plugs or CPU load problem.

Im using Ubuntu, but if you are planning on overclocking and adjusting voltages on ATI cards, you will be out of luck.  I have not found a tool to let me adjust the voltages on my cards, so I can never get as many hash/sec as I can in windows using Trixx.

I use windows mainly because I have much more experience with it and I haven't had the CPU problem some people have with miners.  Dummy plugs = one resistor.  Not exactly a show stopper.  Also it appears GPU overclocking tools are more available/capable for windows.

Yeah i was thinking Linux also just because of resources. For windows xp i would get a stripped version with only neccessary components. Linux..can anyone help on where to download get the right config.

Thanks guys again,

The right config depends on what cards your are using.

Linux is easy - grab almost any common distro and add "3" to the end of the kernel parameters in grub.

From the Grub menu press a key to enter selection mode (where you can move the cursor), choose a boot option and press "e".  Select kernel, press "e" again.  Go to the end of the line and add a "3".  Hit enter, press "b".

That will place you in run level 3 (no GUI, multiuser with networking) and you're already better off than Windows with almost no work. :)

Linux all the way. Don't even think about Windblows.

Windows:dummy plugs,way easyer to overclock,2-3% higher hash rate,easy monitoring of your mining rig and software.
Linux: takes longer to configure,overclocking is a little bit harder (especially when you want to jam with the voltage),low consumption of the resources and most important: you should have (at least) some basic linux (console) skills.
If you want a dedicated mining rig go with linux, else >> windows. My 2 bitcents...

Working Ubuntu tutorial: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=7514.0

check out linuxcoin

2-3% higher hash rate under windows?!?

Are you serious about that? My observations related to developing GPGPU software pretty much lead me to the conclusion that there is no performance difference at all, well never tried implementing a bitcoin kernel/host code under windows though. Other than that, linux's advantages over windows are related mostly to elimination of dummy plugs, the possibility to utilize a number of GPUs in a single process without serializing anything and losing performance. And of course the possibility to build a more energy-efficient system (e.g PXE booting, using lightweight WM like fluxbox, etc). And of course that 4 GPU limit. Overall, with more manual intervention, with linux you can build kinda cheaper and more energy-efficient system. Then of course you can pretty much fuck it up.

There should never, ever be a difference in GPU mining between OSes.  With the exception of driver versions.

A WM?  Really?

Consider a single sempron, no GUI, no DVD, no other disks, no monitor, 256M of RAM, no monitor, no GUI, no keyboard, no browsers, no GUI, on board sound disabled, AMD Cool n' Quiet on, BIOS-only RAM underclocking, run level 3, no GUI, no automatic coffee maker, no silliness.

People will scoff at CPU mining, but go crazy over 3% gain in a power hungry OS?

A simple Linux desktop can do 3MHs on a core without scaling up to full power load.  Some ATOM processors can do 1-2MHs and never consume more power.  There's your 10% gain overclocking a 300MHs card and performing extra cooling.

10%? (300/100)*10 != 1 nor 2...

Also why use that extra power when you know it's so inefficient that it costs more in money than it produce?

So... ultimately Windows can do more h/s than Linux, because of the easier overclocking overhead, but Windows uses more power?
Am I following this debate so far?

Surely someone knows of a good clocking utility in Linux...

I was thinking ahead of myself there, eh?  I'm not even going to edit the typo out. :)
I use multiple systems in parallel and was thinking in several systems instead of a single desktop.

Define inefficient.  My PC is on.  With the CPU underclocked and at 0 load with no miner, it produces 0MHs.
The CPU underclocked and at 100% load on a single core with a miner consumes no more power than it did previously.  It produces 2MHs.

Windows boot up on the same system at 10-20 seconds of complete load with no scaling is more expensive than not running a miner.  It's also more expensive than running a miner.  Hmmm...

Add a GUI.  That consumes far more cycles and far more power than running a single thread on a multi-core processor in many systems.

If your definition of "inefficient" is "not producing anything and costing the same as if it were" then I suppose that's correct....

Overall I prefer linux because of the easy customization and the more power it gives me to change things. Also (subjectively) for the higher uptime.

For example, here is a quick'n'dirty web interface I did for my dedicated mining machine:

http://78.90.217.9:5566/mine/

This took me about ~30 minutes to set up and code this. I also have web interface to shutdown/start/change fan/clock settings. I can easily control my mining process via my phone. I took me just a couple of hours to implement and set up.

Wow man that's really awsome, can you share a bit of how you set that up?

Would you be willing to share that?

YES, please share that!

Not to be dismissive of the clever work you guys are admiring, but....

You all do realize that's just an Apache/PHP implementation?  It probably uses a few exec(), regex and maybe even RPC calls with the technology you already have.  It's more than likely extremely implementation specific and won't work unless you use exactly what he's using to mine.