According to the FAQs, the Linux X86 client currently being developed will be deployed in 2005. We will be able to compare the two then. My guess is that the only major speed improvement possible is with multi-processor support. And keep in mind that Intel hyper-threading is beginning to be called "legacy multi-processing" by non-Intel types, now that Intel has started moving toward multi-core designs.

I just have to find a polite way to tell people that they are mistaken. I have been telling myself that for many years.

Uhhmmm . . . What the Performance Test shows is that Windows 2000 is the most inefficient operating system for a server. OS2 or any Unix variant is much more efficient. However, that has minimal impact on a computation-bound process running under that operating system. Assuming that it is not being paged in and out constantly and runs only when resources are available at lowest priority, the operating system should make very little difference since the numerical analysis program will almost never make an operating system call.

I agree with the people saying that a CPU bound numerical process is not going to care what OS it is on, but for me a Linux client would contribute much more. My laptop overheats and powers off if I let the grid client run, but I have a Linux server running in the cupboard that could contribute about 99% of its CPU 24x7x365!

Brian.

A blanket statement like this without any sort of proof is just ludicrous. The paging algorithm used by any OS is tuned for the tasks that it is most likely to run. To say one is better than another is like saying yellow is better than blue. You could say Linux has an advantage here because there are several different paging algorithms you can compile into the kernel depending on your specific needs. Linux will beat Windows for some tasks and Windows will beat Linux for other tasks.


This is false. Windows has 32 different priority levels while Linux has 40.
For all practical purposes the difference is insignificant. Windows just handles them differently than Linux. For the most part, people don't need more than 3 or 4 different priority levels. This whole point is moot anyway since you WANT the agent to run at the lowest priority possible so as not to interfere with the performance of the system at all. If it was the same priority or higher as most other processes on your system, your system would really be hurting if it tried to do anything else.


Where do you get this little gem from? Both Linux and all Windows NT based OSes (NT, 2000, XP) are similar: they're both multi-process, multi-threaded, preemptive operating systems.

Please, I love Linux as much as anyone and have several machines myself that would love to play on the WCG, but false comments like this are what give the Linux community 'zealot' status. You don't need to spread FUD about Windows in order to show the strengths of Linux.


The problem is not Rosetta. It was running on Linux before Windows and in fact runs on a Linux cluster in ISB's lab. That's what they were using before deploying it on the WCG. We also do not own the source code so its not ours to opensource.

The problem is the agent software we are using from United Devices. They just don't have a non-Windows or SMP client available yet.

As we state in our Software FAQ , we are planning on rolling out a Linux version in 2005.