So, I just made the jump and installed linux on a laptop with a core i7-3610QM.
I had a few (very) frustrating tries at it. The drives were plugged into the wrong connections on the motherboard - the 500 gb data drive using sda and the SSD using sdb. Regardless of me choosing SDB, grub kept trying to install itself to sda.
Eventually I figured out the partition layout and did it manually - and this being my first linux install I still probably didn't do things perfect but it is working for now. I ended up using Ubuntu 16.04, got things going perfectly here. I ended up using boinc remotely to check project and task status and so far so good. It is incredible that it went from over 2.5 hours to 1.6 to finish a Zika WU although NVDA which is the screen reader I use on windows can be a resource hog for no reason at all. In all fairness, I did have other things like dropbox and resilio sync running in windows - but even disabling them made little difference.
However I am having one problem. Not that it's a big one, but I want to make sure this machine is performing at its max.
I'm noticing the CPU fan isn't staying at 100% - not that that is a bad thing at all, but it never went below max on windows, unless Linux works that much differently? It seems to be going from 100% down 2 or so speeds and slowly climbing back up. This is a Clevo p170em.

Less important to me at this moment though curious. I'm running an Nvidia Geforce 670M. Do I need to do anything special in these later versions of Ubuntu to enable cuda or should it come default with the newest Nvidia driver?

As for the CPU question, I used 2 methods and both are giving me different pieces of info though no less accurate. Just not what I'm looking for.

cat /proc/cpuinfo
I get this. PS: DO I need to update anything to deal with the CPU bugs listed or are they simply there for reference sake?

processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 58
model name : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3610QM CPU @ 2.30GHz
stepping : 9
microcode : 0x12
cpu MHz : 2294.747
cache size : 6144 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 8
core id : 0
cpu cores : 4
apicid : 0
initial apicid : 0
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 13
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc cpuid aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx f16c rdrand lahf_lm cpuid_fault epb pti tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid fsgsbase smep erms xsaveopt dtherm ida arat pln pts
bugs : cpu_meltdown spectre_v1 spectre_v2
bogomips : 4589.49
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:
It gives me that for each core. I know that's the base clock of this processor but surely it must be using some form of turbo boost? In theory, it should clock up to 3.1 ghz when all cores are active, which they are now as I have boinc always set to run.


The second command I've tried is lscpu. I get this:
Architecture: x86_64
CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order: Little Endian
CPU(s): 8
On-line CPU(s) list: 0-7
Thread(s) per core: 2
Core(s) per socket: 4
Socket(s): 1
NUMA node(s): 1
Vendor ID: GenuineIntel
CPU family: 6
Model: 58
Model name: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3610QM CPU @ 2.30GHz
Stepping: 9
CPU MHz: 2294.747
CPU max MHz: 3300.0000
CPU min MHz: 1200.0000
BogoMIPS: 4589.49
Virtualization: VT-x
L1d cache: 32K
L1i cache: 32K
L2 cache: 256K
L3 cache: 6144K
NUMA node0 CPU(s): 0-7
Flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc cpuid aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx f16c rdrand lahf_lm cpuid_fault epb pti tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid fsgsbase smep erms xsaveopt dtherm ida arat pln pts

Sorry if that second output was a little too verbose.

Is there a way to find the current CPU frequency, similar to CPUZ on windows?
With that all being said, so far the speed difference is pretty amazing. Next linux project (and hopefully easier to install) will be the fx8350. Just want to make sure this one is performing as it should.

Being a fully blind user, linux is very different. It required a lot of experimenting with alternative methods because there was a lot of different information out there as far as screen readers and linux distros went.

Ubuntu 17.10 had no Orca at install - or at least no speech coming through my speakers. Likewise it does like to crash quite often and terminal is required to get it back. Luckily all I plan on using these machines for is Boinc and WCG, so it isn't too big of a deal but as far as the screen reader is concerned I couldn't rely on this as a full time operating system. Being able to control so much from a terminal is so freeing, though.

Any help is very much appreciated.
PS: Does anyone have any other tips for me?