Folding Forum

I dug out an old PC to plug my left over GPUs into and I want to use it for Folding. the problem is, I have no idea what to use as a light OS. Windows is out of the question and I like the Idea of linux since it can just fit on a flash drive. Can someone recommend an OS in the linux section to do what i want? its going to be a headless PC once everything is set and will be running as long as the CPU and GPU will last.

If you don't have much Linux experience, then the GUI (Desktop) version of Ubuntu is a good start. Same with Linux Mint too which is a derivative of Ubuntu.

Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS is recommended with the current version of F@H if you want to install FAHControl and don't want to to change dependencies.

GUI aside. how bloated is it? I wouldn't need to prune some software?

Ubuntu Desktop comes with office software, games and everything, so if you want a lighter version and don't want to uninstall the office stuff, install Ubuntu Server 18.04.5 LTS. Select the "Server" download instead of the "Desktop" download. You'll want to remote control the client from another machine then - in case it stops for some reason. I like to check at least once per day that my machine is folding.

You can install a GUI on the Server variant of Ubuntu too, but it doesn't come with so many desktop tools pre-installed.

For a beginner, I would recommend to stick with the most popular Linux versions, WITH GUI; which are Ubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Mint or Debian.
There are plenty of others. But those are the most used ones, and easiest to get started with.
Other versions may not work as easily out of the box.

For a low resource OS, most PCs will fold on a headless OS at nearly as fast as on one with GUI.
I would only recommend to go GUI less, if your system is RAM or HDD/SSD disk space starved.
Or CPU starved, but any CPU that shows folding slowdown from running a GUI, is not a CPU you'd want to fold on anyway.

So if you have low resources, here's my recommendation in order of efficiency:
- Ubuntu server (GUI less, DOS/terminal based, more difficult)
- Lubuntu (Modern Windows XP/7 lookalike)
- Xubuntu (Slightly aged Windows XP lookalike)
- Kubuntu (Aged Windows 98/XP lookalike)
- Ubuntu (Modern Mac lookalike)
- Debian (aged Windows XP/Vista lookalike)
- Mint (Very modern Windows 7/10 lookalike)
- Redhat (Extremely aged Win 98/XP lookalike)

Lubuntu is generally the smallest, easiest, most efficient OS with GUI, and fits within 8GB of disk space, and uses only 150-170MB of RAM. Even less if you prune it from programs you'll never use anyway.
The difference in performance between each is only minimal. And most people choose the OS they're most comfortable with (or looks nicest).

K/L/Xubuntu and Mint are derived from Ubuntu, which is derived from Debian, and use the same underlying core as Ubuntu.
Meaning you can troubleshoot from the Ubuntu documentation, archives and forums as a lot of the same terminal commands are used between each version.

I myself use Lubuntu, and disable the GUI if I don't need it (sudo init 3). It saves like about 25MB of RAM.
If you take Ubuntu Server, you may need to install drivers to get wifi to work, and may need to map disk drives; as the server version auto detects only very basic hardware.

Add linux lite 4.8 to your list. Based on ubuntu 18.04, clean and light gui.

5.0+ will also work, its based on 20.04 which needs python 2 workarounds for fahcontrol.

A friend of mine recommended Pop!-OS.
It's really a nice sleek OS, but it needs to be installed as a legacy OS (no UEFI).
Since it's based on X-window manager, it uses almost no system overhead for the GUI.
If it only had UEFI, it would be a great alternative as well.

If you want a light headless OS, I'd recommend Debian net-install: https://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst

Don't select any desktop or anything in the selection in the installer. If you just install the base system, it'll consume 300 MB of disk space, 15 MB of RAM, and then you can install the nvidia-driver packages, fahclient, and you should be good to go. Let us know if you need any help setting up F@h through the command-line. I'd recommend also configuring remote access for FAHClient so that you can connect to it from FAHControl on another PC.

You could always run DOS, don't think you get much lighter than that.

Yavanius wrote:You could always run DOS, don't think you get much lighter than that.

http://www.menuetos.net/index.htm

Pretty much any Linux distribution that allows a headless install (most well-known distros do) without emacs will give you a lightweight OS. Ease of use and maintenance should be your main concerns. Also, consider the charter of the distro. While Debian is more user-friendly than Red Hat and its derivatives, it is geared heavily towards open licenses. So, it is more work to install proprietary software, including graphics drivers. Combine this with FAHClient's tendency to fall over on any completely open stack and you have an unexpected mismatch.

For completeness, I am folding on Centos 8.2 with the open-source AMD graphics drivers, but using the closed-source AMD OpenCL stack. After running for about three months (time to hit log rotation quotas), it takes up ~4.0 GiB storage and uses ~2.8 GiB RAM while folding on two GPUs and 54 CPU cores.

Yavanius wrote:You could always run DOS, don't think you get much lighter than that.

I doubt you'll find ethernet or wifi drivers for dos, not to mention, FAH for DOS?
It works in Windows Command, but that's different from DOS.
You can always install a headless Windows Server (still comes with a GUI, but only displays a command window).
For anything sleeker, a headless Debian, Ubuntu Server, or Redhat, are your most obvious choices; as long as you can get the internet connection to work (usually Ethernet works out of the box, but Wifi needs drivers).

For ease of access, Amazon sells these $20 Wifi bridge dongles, that can be used as an AP, repeater, or network client.
They'll allow you to use Wifi, on a headless OS, without the need for installing any drivers (works just as if you had an ethernet connection, after setting it up).
A real ethernet cable connection is always the best. But in absence, this is a good alternative!

Depending on how technically/Linux-y capable you are, nixOS is incredibly bare bones. All the caveats of driver support and all the painful gory details of managing Linux apply.