Topic: Linux vs Windows for Dedicated Mining - page 3. (Read 37648 times)

Just to be clear, these positives are all well and good but few are actually "advantages" over Linux:

- Linux can handle process/core affinity too but there is little need for this here.  CPU mining is very inefficient and GPU mining requires practically no work from the CPU.

- Linux has easy remote management with ssh (many thanks to the BSD guys).

- I'll give you that Windows has a big advantage over Linux when it comes to drivers.  The ability to overclock comes under this heading too.  That said I'm able to overclock and overvolt my non-reference 5850's in Linux without any BIOS flashing so things aren't so bad, but certainly Windows has the advantage.

- You can't list power management as a positive and a negative.

- Being easier and faster to setup is a matter of opinion.  Indeed, I find Windows much harder to use and more confusing.

Also, I doubt there is any "uberness" associated with using Linux these days.  Both Mac OS X and Ubuntu Linux are seen as viable alternatives to MS Windows.  I think mining bitcoins says more about computer nerdiness than using Linux.

There seems to be alot more positives for linux than negitives... let me just clear that up a little...

Windows
-------- Positives -------------
Can run upto 8 GPU's(maybe more) using 11.6 drivers or greater
Windows CPU usage can be directed to one core using affinity thus freeing up all other CPU cores
Remote management is super easy using vnc or many other similar services for headless miner boxes.
Normally the latest drivers will arrive on Windows first(not all the time but most of the time)
Over clocking is a breeze with windows without any bios flashing
Just about all hardware will work for windows.
alot of easy to use GUI application for mining
Power management can be used but can some times be tricky to setup
Just all round easier and faster to setup

----- Negatives --------
Power management probably not as easy as Linux
inherit normal Windows faults
Need dummy plugs for overclocking(not needed for mining multiple GPU's tho')
You wont be counted as Uber when using Windows instead of linux

Security and stability is only limited to the users knowledge and his configuration, this also applys for any linux box too. Windows can be super stable and secure if set up correctly

Just to add Linux is more stable and more secure then winbox.

I've got 14 cards on linux and 4 cards on windows.  I'll run it down for you from what I noticed.

--------- Positive--------------

1) Linux has superior power management.
a1)  Running 6970, 6970, 6950 in windows draws 1100 watts in windows.  
a1)  Running 6970, 6970, 6970, 6870, in linux draws 1100 watts.

2) Linux has drastically less CPU usage.  I need at least a 3x core at 3 GHz to run 4x 5850s in windows.   On linux i disable all cores but 1.   I now run a 2.7 single core with 4x 5850s.

3)  Remote management is vastly easier in linux.  Multiple SSH etc.

4)  Hash per second is virtually the same.

5)  Incredibly stable.  I think I've had a 4 machines up for 2-3 weeks now.

6)  Can run ATI Stream 2.1 & 2.4 at the same time.  Allowing 6xxx and 5xxx on same system.

-----  THE DOWNSIDE ------------

Voltage tweaking and overclocking are terrible.

1) 6950, 6970, 6990 cannot be overclocked in linux using AMDCtrl.   Any overclocking cause the mhash to lower.

2)  Non-reference 5xxxx are very difficult to overvolt.  Easy to overclock under stock voltage.  Lowering memory is difficult.

3)  Basically if you cannot flash your bios then you will NOT be able to overvolt your card in linux.  (You can still overclock at stock voltage.)

4) Fairly difficult to get wifi cards working if you don't get the right one.

Totally wrong yes you can control your mining nodes from the terminal and you can also forward X11 to your server and use the GUI's too. LinuxCoin comes with a auto PXE setup and will become a PXE / DHCP / HTTP server and distribute itself to as many nodes as you like. Tomorrow I'm going to be updating the scripts so that you can also monitor your nodes from a pretty little web interface on the server that monitors the GPU load, temp, fanspeed and will also read out your hashrate

AMDOverdriveCtrl comes with everything need to voltage tweek your cards. and you can now overclock ATI cards above / below their limits.

Updating the software as easy as typing

apt-get update&apt-get upgrade

Linux isnt as scary as you may think lol

but to put it simple, i cant just chainload LinuxCoin using Grub4dos for PXE boot and mine trought SSH?

As for installing drivers and upgrading mining software it cant be done by just using a shell scritp???

all of this considering using a "Server PC" for file cache.

drgr33n, if you can make LinuxCoin as easy to setup and update its clients as my MinerPE, we gona have a perfect mining software for cluster mining, but at it its now MinerPE it its just way too easy to administrate, setup and update... and that is a MUST for single vga setups because its likely ppl will have 10+, 20+, 30+ of them, not to mention voltaje tweak support, something that Linux does not have.

Right now im using Linux only for my multiple gpu setups.

This has got me thinking. LinuxCoin 0.2.1b is capable of distributing its filesystem via http to the PXE clients. What about if we code a nice db driven front end using php ? Would be simple and easy to setup.

For a dedicated mining rig, Linux is a no-brainer.  Linux is free (in speech but more applicably here also as in beer), whereas Windows is going to run you $100-200.  There are lots of arguments over which is faster, but I can pretty much guarantee you that even if Windows is somehow faster, it's not $100-200 faster.

On debian exists a terminal dialog creator used on deb package configuration...anyone can help creating that?

I'm very interested in jumping on board if you want me LinuxCoin is already capable of booting from a USB stick and cloning itself via PXE. This is all pretty much setup and there for you to use I have some quick and dirty scripts to set things up.

I'm very interested in creating something that can administrate this all and give the user more control without having to dive into a teminal and start hammering away at the keyboard

This is indeed exactly what I was thinking about. I'll put something together in the next few days; stay tuned for an announcement (in a new thread!).

If it was nice and easy to setup and use, I would definatly be interested. I would like to build a few diskless mining rigs and a central server. Make it easy to push different images or configurations on the fly, central control and monitoring of all the mining clients. But hopefully easy enough that someone with just basic linux (ubuntu) knowledge like me can get it going. Would be nice if it could handle installing the driver/sdk/python, and maybe even the miner software itself. I had much difficulty getting my rig mining with linux..

Adding LinuxCoin to PXE boot is trivial(i already using Grub4dos for MinerPE), after that i guess i can mine trought SSH.

LinuxCoin rules!!!! ups... sorry. My bad.

I've put together my own PXE setup for my Linux mining rig as a proof of concept. If there's demand, I'll develop it further and release it.

Cool, I particularly like the network booting.  This gives Windows an 'easy and quick to configure' bonus over Linux which I won't deny.  If you are setting up even a moderate sized farm and/or are just looking for maximum profit (and your time is valuable) then this could be a good choice.

However, it may well be that one can achieve better MH/s or MH/J in Linux and I think there are a few people on these forums who value the extra MH/s more than the 2-3 hours time configuring the miner.  Indeed I doubt I'm alone in actually enjoying the configuration and tweaking.

fair enoght.

pros:
*Easy to setup: 10 minutes from first boot to mining, incluiding overcloking.

*Easy to update software in the farm: (5 minutes to update a up to 252 pcs farm, another 15-30m to reboot afterwards, depending on network speed and pcs)
 -Adding Phoenix hashrate mod??? just update the kernel.cl file in server and reboot the farm
 -Updating drivers and SDK??? update the files in the server and reboot the farm.

*MSI Afterburner support on every pc in the farm, oc settings are saved and stored.

*VNC Server support on every client on the farm.

*PXE boot, no pendrives or HDDs, just LAN boot.

*Easy to mod, 90% of the work is on batch files, making it trivial to mod or add funtions.

*No problem with corrupted files on client pcs on the farm, so you will never worried again about some client not booting because a file is corrupted.

cons:
*Only 1 VGA is supported.
*Its not Linux (?)

Anyway, check the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xN52sWA1BBM

Care to elaborate?  What is MinerPE?  Do you have any stats which will convince us that MinerPE is superior to other approaches?

You can use ubuntu as it's the most easy distro to operate with. But search around this forum, there is SMART Coin distro also made and optimized for bitcoin mining.