Linux Mint 19: Transitioning to V8 on 21

[Catalina588]

As long forewarned, Linux Mint 19 is ending support this month. The logical thing to do was apply updates, and go off support. However, version 19.3 is already out of sync with nVidia drivers, so applying updates makes the Foldingathome client unusable. Woe is me. I only killed two of 12 machines before realizing my folly. BEWARE!

The next logical step was to upgrade to V8 beta on Linux Mint 19.3. Don't bother: the runtime does not connect at app.foldingathome.org. Nor does the localconnect.

Next step, one step short of installing Windows 10, was Linux Mint 21 plus V8. This was rather simple compared to my first forays into Linux five years ago. The successful steps are:

• 1. Install Linux Mint 21
  2. Apply updates using Update Manager
  3. Install the latest nVidia driver using Driver Manager
  4. Install the V8 client from foldingathome.org/beta

By navigating Firefox to app.foldingathome.org, the V8 client connected in seconds. I used a saved v7 config.xml file to prompt my user data.

Early observations:
- CUDA is running the two RTX 2080 GPUs at 99%
- CPU utilization is 52%. I turned off CPU folding because I'm running on a Pentium. (Yes, that was a cheap, purpose-built build that looks better with V8). That's exactly half the CPU utilization of V7 (including hyperthreading).

So, happy camper here. I hope this post encourages Linux Mint 19 users to jump to version 21, with long-term support.