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Overclockix 3.7 Released

prostoalex writes "Overclockix 3.7 is released, available via bittorrent. It's a live Linux CD with a bunch of utilities for 'torturing' the PC hardware, hence the name. The authors seem to take a reasonable approach on graphical desktop, cutting out what they consider unnecessary eye candy, but leaving in the tools essential for effective GUI. 'Some new package highlights such as knoppix firewall, vlc, superkaramba, KDE 3.3.1, newer 2.6.7 kernel, NX client, and many more', the site says."

21 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. Torture the computer? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Is Windows ME on there?

    1. Re:Torture the computer? by Skidge · · Score: 3, Funny

      That would be against the Geneva Convention.

    2. Re:Torture the computer? by christopherfinke · · Score: 5, Funny

      That would be torturing the user, not the computer.

  2. no distributed.net client? by rahard · · Score: 3, Interesting
    unfortunately, there's no distributed.net client. :(

    does anybody have a bootable CD with dnetc client :)

  3. Cutting out eye candy?? by kidgenius · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Why include KDE then? Why not something lighter like fluxbox, rox, etc?

    1. Re:Cutting out eye candy?? by Justin205 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why include KDE then?

      Some degree of familiarity to make it usable by non-Linux users? (i.e. Windows users who found it and want to play with it.)

      --
      "Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you."
  4. Re:Kinda late... by pronobozo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Why is this being posted just now? Not that this isn't really interesting, but the link says it was released on December 7th..." Some of us can't keep up with every single release of every single program. Although we try.. some slip past. Did you know when it was released? seems to me you just found out today. :-) Not picking on you, just trying to figure out your point.

    --
    ------
    insert sig here,here, and here
  5. mmm... Folding by PaintyThePirate · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've been using Overclockix for a few months for Folding@Home. It is brilliant in that you can set up a Folding box that needs no HDD, and a keyboard/video/mouse only to configure the Folding client.

  6. Overclocking damage via software, Possible on PCs? by 10000000000000000000 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Do you remember the good old days? When software configuration had the power to wreak physical havoc on the machine components themselves?

    ahhh, I recall a coworker telling me the other day about ancient IBM printers.

    "Giant beasts!" they were described as. "Stacks of alternating row color feed paper as tall as a MAN!" he said. He was in school and was waiting in line to print out a program he held in his hands as several hundred punch cards. The woman at the front of the line inserted her cards and set the system running.

    Apparently she sent some kind of malformatted instruction, because this printer (which was quite substantial in size itself - computers used to be so much more like washing machines and fridges didn't they :) slowly opened it's mechanical lid and began to shoot paper 10 feet out at amazing velocities.

    It took some time for an instructor to get called in to stop the madness, and apparently a good amount of paper had been blown through by that point ¦D

    anyhow, the point of my story is a question. is it still possible to wreak havoc on modern PC's via non-bios software instructions? theoretically? without any physical hardware modification?

    just curious =)

  7. Superkaramba? by GameGod0 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Superkaramba isn't unncessary eye-candy?

  8. So useful for Windows OC'ers by roffles · · Score: 4, Interesting

    One of the biggest problems when overclocking is testing stability, and when you're running windows it's hard to tell just what is causing the instability. I think this will be very successful in the OC community because not only will it provide an environment to push the hardware, but it likely won't crash as randomly as windows does, won't require repartitioning to get into linux, and will probably generate more informative error messages if you push things too hard.

    1. Re:So useful for Windows OC'ers by toddestan · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm not so sure it would be so useful if you plan on running Windows. From my experience, Linux seems to be a bit more tolerant of flakey hardware, and a system that's stable in Linux may not run Windows reliably at all.

  9. Burn-In by mboverload · · Score: 3, Informative
    Some people are sure to mention this, but I want to put out the fire before it starts.

    "Burn-In", aka running new components at their max to get them to run faster, is complete hemp. There is no evidence to support this, and you are just decreasing your machine's life. However, burning-in can show a faulty components.

    1. Re:Burn-In by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 4, Informative

      I used to work at AMD's Austin fab. Your processor is already burned-in at the factory. Actually, we used the term to mean taking the processors and BAKING THEM IN OVENS for several days, and then returning them to our facility and testing them, where the defective ones were sorted out. I think "burning in" is just a word used by people who don't understand it properly, like "big iron" means anything larger than a Sun 220R these days.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  10. Re:Overclocking damage via software, Possible on P by Zorilla · · Score: 3, Funny

    Why don't you just blast the thing with a shotgun?

    Compy 386 for sale!
    Like used
    Slightly Shotgunned

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    It would be cool if it didn't suck.
  11. Re:Overclocking damage via software, Possible on P by X-wes · · Score: 3, Informative

    For those of us who don't get the joke, this was the text of a fictional advertisement from HomestarRunner.com. It ran on Bubs' Concession Stand for Strong Bad's damaged computer after Bubs used his shotgun as an antivirus device.

    Linky

  12. Re:Linux doesn't need any more distros by HermanAB · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why? Why whould having one distro be better? Would you like to run my cell-phone version of embedded Linux on your desktop? Would you like to run a mainframe version of Linux on your PDA? Would you prefer to run a Linksys SOHO firewall version on your Notebook? Do you really need to edit documents on your MP3 player?

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    Oh well, what the hell...
  13. Apparently yes, but I haven't tested it by drgonzo59 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    A while a ago I went looking for a video ram testing utility. The only one I was able to find was on this page created by this Russian guy at this website. (It's mostly in Russian though, which I speak).

    There I looked around and found this story about this utility called S2KCt used to supposedly cool some athlon processors by using the S2K bus disconnect instruction.

    The guy writes how he simultaneously ran his utility that does a cpu burn-in and S2KCt and ended up with a burnt motherboard. He says his "converter" burnt. And he wasn't overclocking the machine at the time. He seems to know enough about heat management since he develops similar programs (see below on that). Then later, he says,using similar hardware he tried to test a later version of S2KCt and his motherboard died again.

    So that is what I have recently heard about hardware being damaged by software. Also take note, since the author himself writes utilities that cool and stress the CPU he is not a totally unbiased source.

    Any computer engineers who can validate the story ?

  14. Re:Overclocking damage via software, Possible on P by Brandybuck · · Score: 3, Funny

    I remember doing that (accidentally) a few times. Quite embarassing. But the really cool trick with some printers was to make themr actually "walk" across the room with a series of carefully timed carriage returns. Also you could get some printers to play music (of a sort).

    --
    Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
  15. Ultimate stress test by hairykrishna · · Score: 3, Funny

    1) Create interesting bootable linux distribution

    2) Get posted on front page of /.

    --
    "Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
  16. Wow slashdotted! by arkaine23 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Anyways to answer a few things that have been mentioned... DC apps are preconfigured but the configs are in the ramdisk so its not all that hard to change them. I generally include scripts which reconfigure them and restart them using atyhe newly-generated config. I try stick some instructions about this stuff on KDE's desktop in a folder aptly named Info. Also, I've been putting the default configs outside the clooped filesystem so ppl can edit the iso before burning to change the default DC application configurations for their own use. P.S It's pretty clearly stated that the distro has these apps included and runs folding@home automatically. Its also as easy as "foldoff" to kill the process. WM's- Overclockix has fluxbox and icewm and xfce. The older 3.4 version even have Gnome. You enter a code when booting to use these instead of KDE. Also there's an app in the menu to switch even when running live from the CD. KDE was the logical default choice since its the most popular and most widely-used desktop environment, and my target users are tend to be new to linux. Eye-candy: Lately for eye-candy I use just a single added icon theme and the inclus (not running by default mind you). There are some added KDE service menus for ease of use, and transperancy-configured terminals, backgrounds set for icewm and fluxbox... but not much else. To counter-balance, I disable a lot of services I think most ppl won't be interested in on a live CD. When you come right down to it, Overclockix is Knoppix with a little face-lift, some extra tools for stress-testing and distributed computing nuts, and slighttly different package selection whuich includes some popular user-reqit's more up-to-date on the whole than Knoppix is, being upgraded to Debian unstable packages.