Most people start using linux before they know much about it. Usually because it is a stable OS and anything is better than Windows. And then they add their usual applications such as setiathome. And then there are problems. And if you are new try this link for some quick and dirty differences from Windows.
These are answers to questions that have been vetted on the sci.astro.seti newsgroup.
Why does setiathome run so slowly on your computer?
If you run it in the graphics mode, the graphics use half the processing
power. If you have an animated screensaver that will use half the processing
power. If you run both an animated screensaver and graphics mode there is
only 33% left to actually process the data. The solution is to run it in as
a command line with no graphics and make your screensaver a blank screen.
You may like looking at the graphics at first. Why not? But unless it is a 'hello, how are you' signal you aren't going to see ET being discovered.
If running linux always run it
nice ./setiathome
and it will run while you are doing other things and you will never notice it. But it will run at full speed while you are doing nothing. By doing nothing I mean between the time between keystrokes. Millions of computations can be made between keystrokes.
There is a major side benefit to this. The primary cause of component failure is temperature cycling. That means powering it on and off. It also means going from the low temperature of idle to the high temperature of the CPU fully busy. With setiathome always consuming all available CPU cycles you keep it at a fairly constant temperature. You computer should last longer.
Networking with other local computers
The application is not multi-threaded so it can't be done. Even if it could
the networking software has an overhead. Processing separate work units on
separate machines is faster than spreading one work unit out over several
machines. Distributed processing is a loss on serial programs. It is of
benefit when parts have to be processed separately and combined for the
next step.
If you are counting the number of people passing through a door no matter how many people are doing the counting it takes the same time. If you are counting the number of people in a building having one counter in each room is faster than one person going from room to room. Setiathome is the former kind of problem.
Data without the graphics
So how do you find the progress? Use this shell script.
echo grep prog= /mnt/c1/seti/seti/state.sah grep nresults /mnt/c1/seti/seti/user_info.sah date echo
That is
grep prog= /path/to/setiathome/directory/state.sah
grep nresults /path/to/setiathome/directory/user_info.sah
This gives as a typical result
prog=0.06441560 nresults=3350 Sun May 30 23:19:00 EDT 2004
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