Gentoo Linux for Folding?

Am considering setting up a spare hard drive I have and installing Gentoo on it.
Since Gentoo is supposed to optimize itself to your machine upon installation, I was wondering if anyone knew how it would be for Folding.
Would it be as fast as advertised or about the same as Windows?
Machine to be used is a P4 2.8GHz HT with 3GB RAM.

 

From what I have read about this distro, it is supposed to examine your machine then get the packages that will get the optimum use out of the system.
Sounded pretty promising.
Thinking that if it is faster on this P4 about how it would perform on a really fast setup.
Hang on real tight.

 

Not anymore, and even then it wasn't native 'nix but in a VM which, even with all the overhead, was still significantly faster than native Windows. Now with SMP2 client being out, Windows has caught up and I've since lost touch with the *nix side of things.

Now since hrlow has a P4, *nix is the only way to go, 64-bit at that too. I wonder if the points would be worth the power consumed? :confused

 

I have always preferred Linux to crunch/fold using the uniprocessor client,but have jumped on the GPU/SMP band wagon to fold.

Though I use the older 8800 version gpu video cards to fold and an old duel core cpu.

on a side note,no offense to thread starter...

I was reading the faqs page at folding.stanford.edu

Folding@home SMP FAQ

then noticed/read this thread and thought you may be interested in this info. [@Halo]

I myself am running the SMP2 on XP Pro SP3 and returning the results a day early. [dedicated 24/7 computer]

I am on my 3rd WU while posting this and should have the required 10 WU's to receive bonus points around the 21st. of this month.

I am using AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Toledo socket 939 overclocked approx. 100Mhz = 2333Mhz plus GPU's

 

(hanging head)
I guess Gentoo is over my head.
Burned .iso to CD and ran it on the machine.
Needed knowledge of command line functions to get it right.
Will try Ubuntu instead.

 

Just checked out Linux Mint (as 1 of our members prefers for his customers).
They make it sound good, stating that it is safe and needs no antivirus or antispyware programs to be installed.
But it also takes up more than 17GB of hard drive space.

 

When I finally got the hang of Linux using Vector Linux [at the time version 4.3] and minislack now known as zenwalk I came across a Linux called Puppy.
There are many derivatives of Puppy as it seems to be able to be made custom once the user learns to use the included tools to do so,but I have always preferred Pizza Pup to fold and Macpup_Dingo_A or Fire Hydrant is good also [3 sizes - small,medium or everything but the kitchen sink called Inferno3.0b ] all Puppy Linux distributions can be ran from the CD or USB memory device with a save on shut down or rebooting.
There is a frugal install which I guess is considered a hard drive installation,but I have never done so.
There is even a Puppy_xp though it seems to be from an older version 2.

Puppy Linux

Fold On

P.S.fyi Gentoo is much for me also,extreme comes to mind.