Install the alpha version of BOINC on Ubuntu 24.04

In a terminal window, enter:

sudo curl -fsSL https://boinc.berkeley.edu/dl/linux/alpha/$(lsb_release -cs)/boinc.gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/boinc.gpg
sudo echo deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/boinc.gpg] https://boinc.berkeley.edu/dl/linux/alpha/$(lsb_release -cs) $(lsb_release -cs) main | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/boinc.list > /dev/null
sudo apt update
sudo apt install boinc-client boinc-manager

On headless systems, omit 'boinc-manager'. On such systems, the BOINC client can be controlled either using boinccmd, or using a remote GUI.

Details on the installer are here.

GPU computing

If the system has a GPU, it may be usable by BOINC projects that have GPU-enabled apps. On some systems you may need to install GPU drivers that support this.

Check the BOINC client's output on startup. It should detect your GPU (NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel) using OpenCL, and NVIDIA GPUs should also be detected using CUDA. If not, check whether updated drivers are available for your GPU type and Linux distro. In general, vendor-supplied drivers may be preferable to open-source drivers.

Install Podman

Some BOINC projects use Docker to package their applications. We recommend that you install Podman, an open-source version of Docker. To do so:

sudo apt install podman
sudo usermod --add-subuids 100000-165535 --add-subgids 100000-165535 boinc

Configuration

You must tell BOINC which science projects to compute for. The recommended way is to use Science United, where you choose science areas rather than individual projects.

You can configure BOINC to limit its computing, memory usage, and disk usage. Do this using the BOINC Manager (Options / Computing Preferences) or the Computing Preferences form on the Science United website.

Uninstall

To remove BOINC:

sudo apt remove boinc-client boinc-manager


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