The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) is an open source software platform which supports volunteer computing projects such as SETI@home, Einstein@Home, and Climatepredition.net, and can also be used for desktop grid computing within an organization. The BOINC client software, which runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux, allows you to contribute your spare computing power to various projects doing scientific research.  You can participate in a single project or choose any combination you like.

Eric will present a general overview of BOINC, along with a brief description of some of the most popular BOINC projects.  He will explain how to install and configure BOINC on Linux, either using
package managers or from source code, and will demonstrate how to control the BOINC client (the daemon) using the BOINC Manager (the GUI).  If time permits and there is interest there will also be an outline of the process of setting up a BOINC project on a Linux server.

Eric Myers is a physicist who worked on the initial launch of Einstein@Home, and who has contributed code and documentation to BOINC.

Lightning Talks

  • Report from Linuxcon - Sean
  • Report from Debconf - Chris
  • Google App Inventor - Sean