Linux or windows 7

[titanza]

I use Xubuntu for my mining machine, the ATI drivers are eay enough to install, this wiki is pretty good for the driver installation: wiki.cchtml.com

I also use it as my primary OS, it would drive me crazy to dual boot into Windows all the time to work. I would say that if you use Windows as your primary OS then just mine in Windows.

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[c789]

One of the nice things about Linux is that you can give use to your old computers. This weekend I put CrunchBang Linux (uses very low resources) on my old HP 6736 for mining with USB Erupters (not using any GPUs). It has a 667MHz Celeron, 256MB RAM, and USB 1.0 (http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=bph06109&tmp_task=prodinfoCategory&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en&product=60421). I'm pretty sure I couldn't have done that on Windows, and the cost was free. To save watts, I disconnected power to the CD and floppy drives and the setup uses only 42 watts when running, and would be even less if I had used a USB flash drive instead of the HD to host the OS. (For really low watts, you could go with a Raspberry Pi).

With everything running, including cgminer 3.1.1, I don't go over 135MB RAM and CPU use is negligible. The accepted shares, HW errors, and other measurements are in line with what I see in my other setups, so the age of the computer isn't affecting anything.

So, if you have Erupters and an old computer laying around, and you don't want to buy a RPi, put the old computer to use. Your only cost would be a powered hub (if using multiple Erupters).

[PEBKAC]

One of the nice things about Linux is that you can give use to your old computers. This weekend I put CrunchBang Linux (uses very low resources) on my old HP 6736 for mining with USB Erupters (not using any GPUs). It has a 667MHz Celeron, 256MB RAM, and USB 1.0 (http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=bph06109&tmp_task=prodinfoCategory&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en&product=60421). I'm pretty sure I couldn't have done that on Windows, and the cost was free. To save watts, I disconnected power to the CD and floppy drives and the setup uses only 42 watts when running, and would be even less if I had used a USB flash drive instead of the HD to host the OS. (For really low watts, you could go with a Raspberry Pi).

With everything running, including cgminer 3.1.1, I don't go over 135MB RAM and CPU use is negligible. The accepted shares, HW errors, and other measurements are in line with what I see in my other setups, so the age of the computer isn't affecting anything.

So, if you have Erupters and an old computer laying around, and you don't want to buy a RPi, put the old computer to use. Your only cost would be a powered hub (if using multiple Erupters).

Yes, you could have done this with Windows
That machine will be perfectly happy running any NT5.1 kernel based version of Windows, like Windows XP or Windows 2000.
By modern standards, that's going to be too slow for everyday work, but XP started out on such machines.
Erupters are only equipped with a USB->Serial converter (thats why they display as being on port COMx) and they will happily work under such conditions.

On the other hand, Linux is free, old hardware is usually free, so it is a great purchasefree option. It will draw far more power than an RPi tho.
But you could combat that by installing as little hardware as possible, using a USB Flashdrive or IDE->Memorycard adapter, installing as little add-in cards as possible (Linux will run without graphicscard and operated through Telnet or SSH, called "headless") and underclocking and undervolting the CPU.

If you do have some spare cash, an Intel Atom based board will also be a great idea. They will use around 10watt.

[c789]

true, it could have run on an older Win OS...I just don't have the OS CD (or maybe it was on floppies) anymore. I think it came with Windows ME and 64MB RAM originally, but somewhere a few years back I must have formatted the HD because WinME was gone...hence the need for a free OS. It was a bit of a trick to load CrunchBang (#!) on the HD since the #! .iso is larger than a CD (700MB), and the BIOS doesn't support USB booting. I had to put the HD in a different computer, load the OS onto the HD, then put the HD back in the old original computer. Anyway...I had a blast doing it! 

[x^2]

One of the nice things about Linux is that you can give use to your old computers. This weekend I put CrunchBang Linux (uses very low resources) on my old HP 6736 for mining with USB Erupters (not using any GPUs). It has a 667MHz Celeron, 256MB RAM, and USB 1.0 (http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=bph06109&tmp_task=prodinfoCategory&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en&product=60421). I'm pretty sure I couldn't have done that on Windows, and the cost was free. To save watts, I disconnected power to the CD and floppy drives and the setup uses only 42 watts when running, and would be even less if I had used a USB flash drive instead of the HD to host the OS. (For really low watts, you could go with a Raspberry Pi).

With everything running, including cgminer 3.1.1, I don't go over 135MB RAM and CPU use is negligible. The accepted shares, HW errors, and other measurements are in line with what I see in my other setups, so the age of the computer isn't affecting anything.

So, if you have Erupters and an old computer laying around, and you don't want to buy a RPi, put the old computer to use. Your only cost would be a powered hub (if using multiple Erupters).

This is a bit off topic, but are erupters a good investment these days?

[c789]

I haven't done the math but I hear they're not expected to make a profit...unless the value of BTC shoots way up. For me, it's not completely for the income (although who doesn't like that?), but I also just like to play around with computers in general.

[PEBKAC]

--snip--

This is a bit off topic, but are erupters a good investment these days?

Well, that depends on what you pay for them, what the actual difficulty increase will be and how that affects mining income.
It's been said that difficulty goes up every two weeks and they speculate that it increases 10 to 20%.

Lets just assume mining income goes down as much as the difficulty goes up. +20% diff = -20% income.
Currently, a USB Eruptor will generate 0.004BTC per day.
When difficulty goes up 20% every two weeks, you need 2 whole years of 24/7 mining to make 0,279997442372135BTC. At the 58week mark, the two-weeks income will have dropped below 0.0001BTC (thats less than 1 cent USD if 1BTC = $100). By this time, you'd be at around 0.25BTC total. The total increases so little by this time, it's not worth it anymore.

However, if the difficulty only increases 10% per two weeks, you'd have 0,55766224756596BTC after two years. Two-weeks income will drop below 0.0001BTC after 72weeks (approx 1,25yr) and by that time, you would have made about 0.52BTC

So yes, it'll make you a little BTC, and depending on what you payed for them, it may slightly be profitable, purely on the hardware cost. I Haven't factored in electricity, but these things hardly use any so thats almost negligible. ($1 to 2$ per year per Erupter would be about right)

Edit: Ofcourse, this is purely in BTC.
If you buy Eruptors using regular cash (either exchanging it or buying them with cash), you're depending more on the exchangerate. If the exchangerate goes up by the time you discard the Eruptors, it'll have been profitable. If the exchangerate stays roughly the same it really depends on what the difficulty does to income.

Edit2:
Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that you can use an Eruptor for other coins than Bitcoin. As long as it's an SHA256d coin you can mine it with an Eruptor.
This may extend the life and increase your returns.

[Deafboy]

Back in the GPU days I've been using BAMT mining distro: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=65915.0
Running form USB, everything pre-installed.
All you need to do is edit one config file that pops up on first boot to set up number of GPUs and overclocking.