Generic CPU discussion

tullio
tullio
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You are right on the Task

You are right on the Task manager I can see it by clicking CTRL-SHIFT-ESC. On the same British keyboard I can get  the @ character by hitting SHIFT and a key which should give me other characters.

Tullio

Boca Raton Community HS
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Tom M wrote: I am running

Tom M wrote:

I am running win11 but not with an Intel CPU.

While the change in the menuing and task manager layouts were disconcerting my boinc survived the upgrade with no problems.

I run boinc part-time on that system. I didn't notice any problems.

Hth 

Tom M

 

 

Can't say I am a fan of the task manager in Win11. It's not entirely different, but different enough. It feels less functional to me. 

GWGeorge007
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Boca Raton Community HS

Boca Raton Community HS wrote:

Can't say I am a fan of the task manager in Win11. It's not entirely different, but different enough. It feels less functional to me. 

The first computer I had was a DOS machine with no hard drive, but one single floppy disc drive.  I knew nothing about computers was I was a sponge for knowledge and stayed with DOS until Windows came out.  I was a Windows fanboy literally forever, until the latest Windows 10 updates when Windows couldn't even get them right.  And I was not going to move-on-up to Windows 11, knowing that more of the same was coming AND even less control over what I already had. 

That is why I made the switch to Linux.  First, I tried out Mint 19, and it seemed okay.  But I had a h#%& of a time getting used to doing the additional things required to make BOINC work like I wanted it too.  Keith and Ian won me over and I switched to Ubuntu, which they both used, and they helped me tremendously once I was on the same playing field as they were.

With what I've been hearing about Windows 11, and it has been both good and bad, I'm glad I made the switch to Linux.  Currently, I'm on Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS, GNOME Version 42.5, and upgraded to Kernel 6.1.4.  I will admit that I had some goofups with upgrading the Kernel, but Keith was (sortof) patient with me and I finally got it.

But... this is becoming much longer than I wanted it to be... Regardless, I am glad I switched to Linux Ubuntu!

George

Proud member of the Old Farts Association

Tom M
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GWGeorge007 wrote: But...

GWGeorge007 wrote:

But... this is becoming much longer than I wanted it to be... Regardless, I am glad I switched to Linux Ubuntu!

I think the most important question is how is the Linux scheduler handling the Power Cores / Efficient Cores for Boinc Crunching?

I am not sure if we have any of that Intel generation running Linux in the top 50 where we might be able to observe the systems.

Tom M

 

A Proud member of the O.F.A.  (Old Farts Association).  Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.® (Garrison Keillor)  I want some more patience. RIGHT NOW!

Keith Myers
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Considering how long it takes

Considering how long it takes for Linux to catch up to Windows as far as drivers and such, plus how long it takes for disto maintainers to catch up, I would hazard the guess that Linux and Ubuntu at the current distro release of 22.04 had no capacity to understand the differences between power cores and efficiency cores.

It took two half years of Windows 11 releases to get current with the thread scheduler that correctly schedules processes on the appropriate cores. Windows 10 does not have the required thread scheduler.

I don't think Linux has the updated thread scheduler unless you are running some of the upstream kernels or are running a rolling release distro.

Ubuntu 22.04 with kernel 5.15 certainly isn't capable of distinguishing between the two if I have read the recent news articles of Phoronix and remembered such things correctly.

[Edit]

From a search at Phoronix, the Intel Thread Director patches won't make it into the kernel until sometime late in 2023.

Quote:
It will be interesting to see how this new patch series pans out for Alder Lake. Once the patch work settles down a bit more, I'll be sure to try it out on some of my boxes. Though given that it's only now being published and is under a "RFC" flag while the v6.1 merge window is only a few weeks away, it's quite likely this patch series won't be readied for a Linux kernel release until into 2023.

 

Boca Raton Community HS
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GWGeorge007 wrote: With what

GWGeorge007 wrote:

With what I've been hearing about Windows 11, and it has been both good and bad, I'm glad I made the switch to Linux.  Currently, I'm on Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS, GNOME Version 42.5, and upgraded to Kernel 6.1.4.  I will admit that I had some goofups with upgrading the Kernel, but Keith was (sortof) patient with me and I finally got it.

To be honest- I don't hate Win 11 on my person PC/laptop. I can't say the same for our workstations but it has only been a week or two of running them. 

So, I do have some questions based on what you just said- and I am hoping you all (that know much more than I do) can chime in. Just today, students finished building the first of the two new student-built Threadripper workstations (and it powered on- a good moment for them). These will NOT be running Windows and I am searching for the best option for these systems. They will strictly be for scientific work, including BOINC projects. 

Here is the hardware:

CPU: Threadripper 2970WX

Motherboard: x399M Taichi ATX (only MB I could still find)

RAM: Corsair Vengeance (4x16GB) DDR4 2933

HD: WD_BLACK 2TB NVMe

GPU: Nvidia RTX 4090 SUPRIM Liquid X (not yet arrived- have an old AMD FirePro card in it right now) 

Other: be quiet! helped us a great deal with some amazing hardware (Silent Base 802 Window case, Dark Power 12 1000w PSU, Dark Rock 4 Pro TR Edition cooler, Silent Wings 3 Fans). I must say, after working with be quiet! products for the first time, I really like their hardware. 

What non-windows OS would be best for these two builds? I could be wrong, but don't certain Linux/Ubuntu OS work better with Intel CPUs and then other versions work better with AMD CPUs? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Learning these new operating systems is new to me and a majority of the students, but we are all willing to learn something new (and do lots of science). 

Thanks!

Tom M
Tom M
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The 4 of us will be most

The 4 of us will be most helpful if you are using Ubuntu. There are other Linux systems in the top 50 who maybe helpful.

I googled the fastest Linux distro earlier today and ran across a benchmark performance review of nearly all the name brands I have heard of.

The top performing one Clear OS apparently is not easy to learn. But if you are installing it on 5-10 servers it is worth it.

There are also a number of Ubuntu derivatives that try to do specific things more lightly or look like Windows or the Mac Os.

https://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1202799

This not the review I was quoting from but I believe they are very reputable.

 

https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-epyc7543-11way

This is the review I was quoting from.

HTH 

Tom M

 

A Proud member of the O.F.A.  (Old Farts Association).  Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.® (Garrison Keillor)  I want some more patience. RIGHT NOW!

GWGeorge007
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Boca Raton Community HS

Boca Raton Community HS wrote:

To be honest- I don't hate Win 11 on my person PC/laptop. I can't say the same for our workstations but it has only been a week or two of running them. 

So, I do have some questions based on what you just said- and I am hoping you all (that know much more than I do) can chime in. Just today, students finished building the first of the two new student-built Threadripper workstations (and it powered on- a good moment for them). These will NOT be running Windows and I am searching for the best option for these systems. They will strictly be for scientific work, including BOINC projects. 

Here is the hardware:

CPU: Threadripper 2970WX

Motherboard: x399M Taichi ATX (only MB I could still find)

RAM: Corsair Vengeance (4x16GB) DDR4 2933

HD: WD_BLACK 2TB NVMe

GPU: Nvidia RTX 4090 SUPRIM Liquid X (not yet arrived- have an old AMD FirePro card in it right now) 

Other: be quiet! helped us a great deal with some amazing hardware (Silent Base 802 Window case, Dark Power 12 1000w PSU, Dark Rock 4 Pro TR Edition cooler, Silent Wings 3 Fans). I must say, after working with be quiet! products for the first time, I really like their hardware. 

What non-windows OS would be best for these two builds? I could be wrong, but don't certain Linux/Ubuntu OS work better with Intel CPUs and then other versions work better with AMD CPUs? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Learning these new operating systems is new to me and a majority of the students, but we are all willing to learn something new (and do lots of science). 

Thanks!

First of all, I want to congratulate you and your students with a job well done!  To get it to boot on the first attempt is a good thing.  And you are using some of the better products out there (Lord knows there are plenty of inferior ones!), and 'be Quiet!' is one of the better products.  Keep an eye on the PSU though, I've read some stories about 'be Quiet!' PSUs not doing well in suppressing voltage spikes, like what could be caused by your GPU to come.

As for a non-Windows OS, my preference would be Linux, of course.  As you know, there are PLENTY of distros out there where you can have your pick of the litter, so to speak.  Ubuntu is probably one of, if not THE most popular version of Linux.  I am running it, but I will admit that I was sketchy with it at the beginning.  I think your student's would be more likely in tune with a distro like Linux Mint.  It is more in tune with Windows, but still has a Linux flavor to it.  Check out these videos on Linux Mint Cinnamon, ver 21.1 (newest):

Be aware that one reviewer of one of the videos said there was some difficulty with NVIDIA drivers.  I dunno...

Also, Mint does come in four different flavors; Cinnamon, Mate, & XFCE not to mention LMDE.

Ubuntu is also doing things well. 

I tried to select videos based on need and usage.  The one with a comparison between Mint and Ubuntu should be good.  Plus, they are relatively short at 10-20 minutes each.  There are plenty of videos available for different tasks and commands.

The biggest thing to get your students used to is the command line for doing things that Windows did automatically.  That's what took me the longest time ( I'm old... turning 69 next month ), but your high school students should pick up on it very quickly.

Let me know what you think.

George

Proud member of the Old Farts Association

San-Fernando-Valley
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GWGeorge007 wrote: ... ( I'm

GWGeorge007 wrote:

... ( I'm old... turning 69 next month ) ...

age 69 is not being "old"  --  it is being "wise" and experienced ...

cheers

mikey
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GWGeorge007 wrote:   Be

GWGeorge007 wrote:

 

Be aware that one reviewer of one of the videos said there was some difficulty with NVIDIA drivers.  I dunno...

Also, Mint does come in four different flavors; Cinnamon, Mate, & XFCE not to mention LMDE.

I use Linux Mint Cinnamon, and have no problems with Nvidia drivers, I use the point and click method for most things in Linux Mint and drivers are that easy as well. Now if you want the latest drivers that's a command line thing but if you are willing to use one a few versions behind you can chose the one you want from a list inside Settings, Drivers and it will download and install the drivers and when done tell you need to reboot.

 

Quote:
The biggest thing to get your students used to is the command line for doing things that Windows did automatically.  That's what took me the longest time ( I'm old... turning 69 next month ), but your high school students should pick up on it very quickly.

You are just a Spring Chicken there George I turned 70 in December, and yes I agree with you on the command line stuff, I have LOTS of pieces of paper with things I've done with the command line on them and several how to books as well. They all help but for me since my Linux pc's are Boinc only machines I don't really get into the weeds of trying to make them do alot of other things. And yes the high school kids should pick up on and remember the command line stuff they might need to make the computers do more than just crunch for Boinc.

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