Quote from: gyverlb on March 20, 2013, 11:12:21 AM

Quote from: opentoe on March 20, 2013, 04:26:02 AM

Why does everyone want to use Linux with their mining gear? These days a Windows 7 machine can run just as efficient and stable as any Linux distro out there and you have all you need. What's the reason for using Linux at all besides being old school and really just liking Linux?

Because it has always been trivial to script things with Unix: Linux geeks know how to configure their system to autostart everything at boot time. Windows users have to hack around.

Because you can't distribute a pre-configured Windows image for USB keys to others so that they can profit from your knowledge (both because creating a generic Windows LiveUSB is probably impossible and because Microsoft just doesn't want you to do that).

Because serious miners with multiple rigs and adding rigs regularly can simply copy an USB key content to another with minimal changes to get another fully configured system right away.

Because you don't have to pay for any license or make sure you don't infringe on anything.

Because you don't have to buy a PC if you don't use GPUs anymore: FPGA mining rigs can be run from smaller, less costly and less power hungry Linux-based home routers with 32MB.

Auto starting services/programs with Windows is horribly easy.

The only thing that I can see people going for Linux is because it is free. With today's OS you can pretty much do anything and everything you can as with Linux. Mostly everything today is cross platform. Don't get me wrong, I run several Linux boxes at home, even my Newznab server runs Linux and my web hosting VPS run CentOS and they are great for that. I was just curious as why mining people opted for Linux, that's all.

Maybe one day Microsoft will release a FREE OS to the world.