Hey guys, my production has gone to cack recently because my computer is playing up in all sorts of minor ways, including the folding client going screwy. I tend to format my compy every few months and it's long overdue. I thought it might be time to investigate linux, I am interested in the OS, but don't really know anything about it. If I was to use linux, I'd have to create a dual-boot machine (but I've done that with 98 SE/XP before).
Could anyone enlighten me as to any advantages to linux, if any, and if so how I would go about installing it?
You want Ubuntu, Desktop AMD64 bit version, Feisty Fawn or GG (who can remember their crazy acronyms?
Best way to do it, is just to get Windows loaded fat and happy, and then download and burn an iso image file of said Ubuntu. (Don't worry, I'll send you VERY detailed instructions.)
When you reboot and have your CD drive booting up Ubuntu, it will go through it's little install procedure (not really so little), and ask you how much room on the HD you want to use for Ubuntu? I give mine about 40% of the HD size for Linux to have. It will re-format that portion of your HD that you've assigned for it (and don't assign the NTFS partition!), and then it will install the dual boot loader, for you.
You'll love Ubuntu. Under the hood, yeah - it's complicated, but you seldom have to mess with that. The desktop is intuitive, and very similar to Windows, with all the icons, dragging and dropping via the mouse, etc.
One difference is that if you want to copy and paste something into a post, say. Don't close the document you copied until AFTER you've done the pasting. If you do, the material you just copied, just went to byte heaven!
So the clipboard only holds your material, as long as the original source of it, is still running.
The other difference is Linux automatically logs you off of your root accout (that' the one REAL power account in Linux.), after about 3 minutes. I thought it was done just to annoy me, but get this - it's a security *FEATURE*.
Oh, Suuurrrrruuurrre!
You'll make a bit more points if you're folding SMP, (and it's a more robust folding client, as well).
To make folding keep going in Ubuntu, be sure your power saving features are turned off in your BIOS, and then there are three things to do in Ubuntu to shut off it's own power saving features:
1) System >> Administration >> Services:
Turn off CPU frequency monitor and PowerNow, by unchecking their boxes. Save that before exiting.
2) System >> Preferences >> Power Management:
The top slide effects only how long before the monitor will be blanked, so set it for anything you like. The bottom slide needs to go all the way to the far right hand side (never), so Ubuntu knows you never want to have your computer go to sleep, because a key has not been hit, lately.
When and if you update to another version completely (not incremental updates to your same version of Ubuntu). The above will have to be reset since they are the defaults settings.
I'll send you the more detailed info, in a PM.
