Im trying to find out and clarify three things?

1. BOINC manager seems be different version depending on which PiOS your running is that correct?
For example I just did a fresh install into “Bullseye” and I got BOINC Manager 7.16.16
My current Pi's running “Buster” they have BOINC Manager 7.14.2
Any reason why I cant have 7.16.16 on Buster I cant see a way to update it.


2. Proper procedure for installing fresh (not on a headless Pi)
I have always installed using this command, is this still the correct way to install?

sudo apt-get install boinc-client boinc-manager

And after some head scratching I found you also need to type this into terminal for installing into "Bulleseye" otherwise it will not run at boot.

sudo systemctl enable boinc-client
sudo systemctl start boinc-client

With "Bullseye" should I be using 32-bit or 64-bit OS?
With that in mind should I use Bullseye or Buster, newer I assume would be better?


3. Is there some official page that shows me the current BOINC Manager versions
Something to show what the updates do, version log.

Many thanks

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1. BOINC manager seems be different version depending on which PiOS your running is that correct?

It depends on the maintainers of the repositories for your distribution. You can find instructions to ad Gianfranco's repository to allow an up to date version to install here.

This will give you a more up to date distribution than the older ones you listed.

Alternatively you can roll your own either from the latest stable release on git-hub or if you want to risk it the development branch.

Got this message when I tried to post this comment the first time:
"Can't create post. Too many links."
Hence I had to untag the links (sorry).

Regarding (2.)
"systemctl" isn't BOINC specific.
Instead it's a basic command related to the system daemon "systemd".
See: "man systemctl"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemd



Regarding (3.)
BOINC Manager is part of the corresponding BOINC Client package.
More information can be found here:
https://boinc.berkeley.edu/
https://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/WikiMeta
https://boinc.berkeley.edu/download.php
https://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Release_Notes
https://boinc.berkeley.edu/download.php
https://boinc.berkeley.edu/download_all.php

Got this message when I tried to post this comment the first time:
"Can't create post. Too many links."

That's an anti-spam measure, we can only actively tag 3 or 4 URLs with URL tags.

Bullseye is the current release. If you install buster you are installing a release that is at least 2 years older. The repositories for buster will contain the 2yo version of BOINC (probably older). Debian has a buster-backports repo so you could pickup the version that went into bullseye. If you want to use buster-backports see http://=https://marksrpicluster.blogspot.com/2019/12/add-buster-backports-to-raspberry-pi.html. As far as I am aware there isn't a bullseye-backports repo.

As for 32 bit vs 64 bit it depends on what projects you are using and the version of Pi you have. The Pi zero, Pi1 and Pi2 can only do 32 bit. The Pi Zero 2 W and Pi3 can run 64 bit but its somewhat slower than a Pi4. 64 bit apps tend to use more memory so you'd really want at least 2GB. I have a mix of Pi3's and Pi4 8GB. They are all running 64 bit. Projects are Einstein on the Pi3 and Einstein and Rosetta on the Pi4's.

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MarkJ

Fixing link:

https://marksrpicluster.blogspot.com/2019/12/add-buster-backports-to-raspberry-pi.html

I'm still successfully running a lot of WUs on a 3 year old Linux and Boinc system.
Some projects won't run anymore, but I don't have the time to update every one of them to the latest, without running the danger of disabling some functions.
Like my recent upgrade disabled my Intel IGP WUs from the Collatz, while older versions of the OS still run with it.

The OS and the manager usually do very little to the WUs. The WUs themselves are made to run on most versions of Boinc and Linux, some even containing a docker style format, where the WU is ran in a virtual environment.