Tag: Help

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How to contribute to Folding@home on Fedora

What is Folding@home?

Folding@home is a distributed computing network for performing biomedical research. Its intent is to help further understand and develop cures for a range of diseases. Their current priority is understanding the behavior of COVID-19 and the virus that causes COVID-19. This article will show you how you can get involved by donating your computer’s idle time.

Sounds cool, how do I help?

In order to donate your computational power to Folding@home, download the FAHClient package from this page. Once you’ve downloaded the package, open your Downloads folder and double click it to open. For instance, on standard Fedora Workstation, this opens GNOME Software, which prompts you to install the package.

Click install and enter your password to continue from here.

How to start Folding@home

Folding@home starts folding as soon as it is installed. In order to control how much CPU/GPU is using you must open the web control interface, available here.

The interface contains information about what project you are contributing to. In order to track “points,” the scoring system of Folding@home, you must set up a user account with Folding@home.

Tracking your work

Now that everything’s done, you may be wondering how you can track the work your computer is doing. All you need to is request a passkey from this page. Enter your email and your desired username. Once you have received the passkey in email, you can enter that into the client settings.

Click on the Change Identity button, and this page appears:

You can also put in a team number here like I have. This allows your points to go towards a group that you support.

Enter the username you gave when you requested a passkey, and then enter the passkey you received.

What next?

That’s all there is to it. Folding@home runs in the background automatically on startup. If you need to pause or lower how much CPU/GPU power it uses, you can change that via the web interface linked above.

You may notice that you don’t receive many work units. That’s because there is currently a shortage of work units to distribute due to a spike of computers being put onto the network. However, different efforts are emerging all the time.

You can visually see the spike in computers on the network from last year at the same time to 4/4/2020

Photo by Joshua Sortino on Unsplash.

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Sharing Fedora

After being a Fedora user for a while, you may have come to enjoy it. And in fact you might want to encourage others to try Fedora. You don’t need any special privileges or to become a Fedora Ambassador to do that. As it turns out, anyone can help others get started with Fedora just by sharing information about it.

Having the conversation

For example, if you go out to lunch with a group of colleagues periodically, you might find it natural to talk about Fedora with them. If someone shows interest, you can suggest to get together with them for a Fedora show and tell. There isn’t any need for formal presentations or prepared talks. This is just having lunch and sharing information with people you know.

When you’re with friends, relatives, colleagues, or neighbors, conversation often turns to things computer related, and you can bring up Fedora. There are usually opportunities to point out how Fedora would partially if not completely address their concerns or provide something they want.

These are people you know so talking with them is easy and natural. You probably know the kind of things they use PCs for, so you know the features of Fedora that will be attractive to them. Such conversations can start anytime you see someone you know. You don’t need to steer conversations toward Fedora — that might be impolite, depending on the situation. But if they bring up computer related issues, you might find an opportunity to talk about Fedora.

Taking action

If a friend or colleague has an unused laptop, you could offer to show them how easy it is to load Fedora. You can also point out that there’s no charge and that the licenses are friendly to users. Sharing a USB key or a DVD is almost always helpful.

When you have someone setup to use Fedora, make sure they have the URLs for discussions, questions, and other related websites. Also, from time to time, let them know if you’ve seen an application they might find useful. (Hint: You might want to point them at a certain online magazine, too!)

The next time you’re with someone you know and they start talking about a computer related issue, tell them about Fedora and how it works for you. If they seem interested, give them some ideas on how Fedora could be helpful for them.

Open source may be big business nowadays, but it also remains a strong grassroots movement. You too can help grow open source through awareness and sharing!

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon from Unsplash.

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Contribute at the kernel and IoT edition Fedora test days

Fedora test days are events where anyone can help make sure changes in Fedora work well in an upcoming release. Fedora community members often participate, and the public is welcome at these events. If you’ve never contributed to Fedora before, this is a perfect way to get started.

There are two upcoming test days in the upcoming week. The first, starts on Monday 30 September through Monday 07 October, is to test the Kernel 5.3. Wednesday October 02, the test day is focusing on Fedora 31 IoT Edition. Come and test with us to make the upcoming Fedora 31 even better.

Kernel test week

The kernel team is working on final integration for kernel 5.3. This version was just recently released and will arrive soon in Fedora. This version will also be the shipping kernel for Fedora 31. As a
result, the Fedora kernel and QA teams have organized a test week for
Monday, Sept 30 through Monday, October 07. Refer to the wiki page for links to the test images you’ll need to participate. The steps are clearly outlined in this document.

Fedora IoT Edition test day

Fedora Internet of Things is a variant of Fedora focused on IoT ecosystems. Whether you’re working on a home assistant, industrial gateways, or data storage and analytics, Fedora IoT provides a trusted open source platform to build on. Fedora IoT produces a monthly rolling release to help you keep your ecosystem up-to-date. The IoT and QA teams will have this test day for on Wednesday, October 02. Refer to the wiki page for links and resources to test the IoT Edition.

How do test days work?

A test day is an event where anyone can help make sure changes in Fedora work well in an upcoming release. Fedora community members often participate, and the public is welcome at these events. If you’ve never contributed before, this is a perfect way to get started.

To contribute, you only need to be able to download test materials (which include some large files) and then read and follow directions step by step.

Detailed information about both test days are on the wiki pages above. If you’re available on or around the days of the events, please do some testing and report your results.