Microsoft is offering a discount operating system for students with a ,edu email address. One of my major expenses is the OS on a new cruncher. It would be nice if BOINC would support the dedicated members with something. I know from monitoring the BBs that I will be ostacised for this or any suggestion but it still would be nice. A real lure for new participants.

I think, that won't happen ever. Sorry, but things aren't done this way on the interwebs. For everyone's good.

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I'm counting for science,
points just make me sick.

Better check your local computer shop what they can do for you. When I bought the parts for my new system, here in the Netherlands, I got the student retail version of Windows 7 64bit Ultimate along with it. I'm no student, but since it cost me 80 euro's instead of the normal 250-300, do you think I complained? ;-)

The student version is equal to the full version, just cheaper.

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One of my major expenses is the OS on a new cruncher.

Is Linux not an option? Eg. Ubuntu and its derivatives are easy to learn, are free and doesn't require an email address at all. But there are many more. You can check here what may be the best distro for you. Most Boinc projects have Linux apps (except for LHC) as far as I know.

Bart

Most Boinc projects have Linux apps (except for LHC) as far as I know.

(damn, I've just stayed off from this) But utilizing GPU isn't that straighforward, to be honest.

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I'm counting for science,
points just make me sick.

I must say I currently don't have any Boinc GPU apps on my Linux (X)ubuntu/CUDA computer so it's untested, but I have the latest Nvidia driver (256.53) installed. It's not really click and go, but not really hard either. I'll explain what I did:

- First I disabled the already installed Nvidia driver (in Xubuntu) in the System/Hardware drivers menu.

- Download the latest driver for your OS/card from the Nvidia site.

- Open a terminal screen and navigate to where you downloaded the driver and make the package executable (I don't know if this is really necessary, but I did it anyway):

$ chmod u+x NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-256.53.run

Where the package name may be different of course.

- hit: Ctl-Alt-F1

- Type (maybe better write it down as you'll go to a non-graphical screen):

$ /etc/init.d/gdm stop

to stop the X-server.

- Then execute the package:

$ sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-256.53.run

- Follow the installer instructions, you'll probably get a warning something like "nouveau" has to be disabled, but the installer will do that for you when you click Yes. Write down the files the installer tells you to delete for in case you need to enable nouveau again and stuff like that.

- You'll need to reboot, then hit Ctl-Alt-F1 and run the installer again ($ sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-256.53.run). From here things should go straightforward. There was one question if I wanted to enable OpenGL 32 bit or something like that. I said yes, but to be honest I don't know if this was necessary). When the installer is finished do a reboot and everything is supposed to be fine. At least, things were fine with me ;)

If you're going to try it and run Linux Boinc CUDA apps, let me know how it works. I'm really curious.


I hope it helps,

Bart

You don't understand, do you? That's not straightforward. The straightforward is

apt-get install boinc-nvidia

or boinc-ati, or yum, whatever. And then it's up to projects to provide relevant applications.

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I'm counting for science,
points just make me sick.

When we're talking about the 6.10 and later versions of BOINC, there is no Nvidia only or ATI only BOINC client. Both the GPUs will be detected by those clients. A boinc-nvidia or boinc-ati doesn't exist.

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apt-get install boinc-nvidia

That looks like it's straightforward into a dead-end-alley, at least on Ubuntu. Or do you need to add another repository for that?

root@Xub64:/home/bart/Desktop# apt-get install boinc-nvidia
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
E: Couldn't find package boinc-nvidia

Bart

Edit: Jord already gave the answer I suppose.

Piece. I give up.

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I'm counting for science,
points just make me sick.

If you want an .edu email address, have you considered signing up for one of the cheaper online continuing education classes or even a local community college continuing education class, but insisting that you do it only at schools that offer an .edu email address to their students? That should at least insure that you have a right to such an email address.