Bitcoin Forum

Hello all! New to the forum and I was curious about something. I've been a Windows user my entire life, so I have very little knowledge of Linux. However, having browsed the forum, I've decided to switch over once I get my miner up and running. My question is, which version of Linux should be used for a headless setup? I know there are many different versions of Linux, but I haven't the slightest clue if you can use any version or if there is a particular one that is most popular/user friendly, especially for someone who has never used Linux before...

If you're going to have a computer for the sole purpose of mining/using bitcoins, I suggest taking a look at linuxcoin: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/LinuxCoin

If you want to try out linux for day-to-day all-purpose computing, take a look at Ubuntu: www.ubuntu.com

These days, most Linux distributions (that's what they're called, you say "a linux distro" when you refer to different versions) come as "live CDs". So that you can boot your PC from the CD, try it out and see if you like it, without making any changes to your harddrive whatsoever.

Hi ThorsHammer,

Try: Ubuntu 11.04 http://www.ubuntu.com/

The LiveCD and USB stick Option works great to try Ubuntu without installation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_(operating_system)

I should probably clarify myself. My mining rig will be completely separate from my main computer. I have a GTX 460 in that one, which is worthless for mining  :-[. I've read about being able to boot Linux from a flash drive and have it mine by itself without user interaction. This is ultimately what I would like to accomplish, but again, I'm not sure which versions of Linux will allow this. If I'm correct in assuming this, aren't most "Linux distros" free since it's mostly open source? As you can tell, I know little to nothing about Linux ;D

Thanks for the responses! It looks like Ubuntu is the most popular. Now I just have to figure out how it works lol. How big of a flash drive do you need in order for everything to run?

4gb+

I know I have an 8GB laying around here somewhere, so that should work :). The last thing I need to figure out is how this whole automated script thing works...I've read about it, but it sounds confusing as hell. I'll just have to download Ubuntu and familiarize myself with it.

to be honest, if you're not that familiar with linux, you might not want to just jump in the deep end just for mining purposes.
i'm not sure there's any real advantage to going linux for mining purposes, other than that you could set cron jobs and such to notify you if when any of your systems go down,
and other such things.

personally, i'm fond of linux, but i opted to go with windows 7 for two (2.5) reasons.
1. my normal work computer is a macbook pro, and i like using the mac version of windows remote desktop to login and control my headless mining rigs.
2. the sapphire trixx application for windows is an incredibly easy and powerful tool for overclocking radeon cards, and i prefer the guiminer to a straight-up command console display.

2.5 ... if you mine on btcguild, and donate 2.5%, they will e-mail you a notification any time one of your machines stops submitting shares
(thus compensating for any lack of cohesive remote mining cron job overview).

hope that helps you a bit.

If you're coming from windows I would recommend Linux Mint 11, I'm not to fond of the new Ubuntu interface (Unity).

If your goal is just to mine in Linux rather than learning how to use Linux, I recommend BAMT https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=28967.0

A USB stick-based Linux system that's already setup for mining, you just have to edit a couple of text files with your particular setup (pools you use, username/passwords etc) and you're good to go.

I would recommend older version of ubuntu, probably 10.04