Hello,

The BOINC community has been offered assistance from a design studio to improve the look, feel and functionality of the BOINC client. AS such part of this work would involve user studies/interaction, i.e. with you the volunteers. Would there be interest in participating in this?

Regards

David

Oh dear. Improve.

Well, as long as it can be offered as a third option, along side Simple view, and Advanced view.

I would wish the client to show cpu time like version 5 and earlier instead of running time. Then we can see which task hangs.

As a new member, I would love to see improvments in functionality etc. of the client. There are still a couple of things unclear to me, even after using the client every day for the last four weeks.

So yeah, there is interest in participating in this :)

By BOINC client, you actually mean the part of BOINC behind the scenes and not the GUI? Or the whole BOINC install? Or BOINC Mgr? Some use the terms interchangeably.

If it includes the mgr, take a look at the program BOINCTasks. It already has a lot of improvements to the GUI that should be in the Mgr.

If its the actual client then many people have asked about managing hardware via slots. I guess kind of like the how FAH handles hardware. GPU 1 can be setup with X settings in slot 1, while GPU 2 can be setup with Y settings in slot 2. 3 CPU threads can run this task in slot 4, while 5 more threads in slot 4. For BOINC that could be set 3 threads on one project, 5 on another project. For finer control like this, separate/concurrent clients are needed to setup the GPUs on separate projects with separate queues. Or CPU queues different than GPU queues.

I never want tasks to be interrupted. Never ever stop a task to run something else. Ever. Discard a task if it will miss a deadline before an already task is running is stopped for another.

Separate the Run priority/Resource Share into 2 parts. Which project has its tasks downloaded via resource share and which project has its tasks run next. I'd much rather have the tasks run FIFO.

Setting "No New work" should not affect the tasks that have already been downloaded/in queue from running. The client thinks its OK to leave those tasks until the minute before their deadline. Again FIFO and let resource share control task download, not task running order.

Make resource share instant, not a gradual change over time. Or an option for it. So many people complain at project sites because they don't know how this works and assume a new project is controlling task download when its really the client.

As a new member, I would love to see improvments in functionality etc. of the client. There are still a couple of things unclear to me, even after using the client every day for the last four weeks.

So yeah, there is interest in participating in this :)

Hi philipp,

could you be specific about what you don't understand, possibly in a separate thread. It is likely that someone here could explain the unclear things. Your request could then say what you would like to be more transparent.

Dave

I'm prepared to participate in this. How do we apply?

We probably just need to wait until the new UK week, when David is back.

Having used many open-source products and noting the recent BOINC evolution from relatively integrated development team to a looser arrangement, I would encourage the design studio to consider two things as particularly important:

1. Avoid "featuritis", as suffered by innumerable open-source projects. Clarity is very important for usability, particularly in a casual application such as BOINC, where volunteers are not using the software for their own detailed or technical purposes.

2. Although managers the world over now cringe at the mention of sustainability as an objective, there will be little benefit to BOINC users in the long term if the changes made soon fall into disuse because of an inability to sustain development.

My tuppence worth ...

I know it is possible to set specific hours to either do work or access the network. How easy would it be to have it so that it woulde be possible to set specific hours to use all processors and a reduced number at other times e.g. use 50% 0f processors between 08:30 and 20:30 and 100% at other times?

The problem is that you would have to get one of the developers to want to do this. As I understand it, there is no-longer a paid development staff at Boinc, just volunteers. Since they are unpaid volunteers they work on what they think is important. No one can assign them this work.

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I know it is possible to set specific hours to either do work or access the network. How easy would it be to have it so that it woulde be possible to set specific hours to use all processors and a reduced number at other times e.g. use 50% 0f processors between 08:30 and 20:30 and 100% at other times?

My first thought was a script/windows scheduler to swap app_config files to use max # of concurrent tasks. Restart the client after the swap unless there is a boinccmd to re-read app_configs.

Anyone know what is happening with this?

I've PMed David but there's been no response.

Oxford Uni is in between terms, and BOINC and it's foibles isn't the be all and end all for the Drs and Professors.

Things will happen when they happen.

Oxford Uni is in between terms, and BOINC and it's foibles isn't the be all and end all for the Drs and Professors.

Things will happen when they happen.

Les, I appreciate that you're trying to be helpful, but are you really trying to make the case that David (who I infer from your message is highly educated) wasn't aware of this term break when he started this thread? And how do we know that the design studio don't want to get on with things and that they aren't being held up by everything having to happen on Oxford time?

Just what do we have to do to get these Oxford boys to treat volunteers with basic respect?

Another point is that at least two of the developers frequent these boards even though they post rarely if at all so they have almost certainly seen the ideas posted anyway.

I would like to be able to pause GPU work separately from CPU in the daily schedules section of the options.

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I suspect this will be for 7.18.x as source code is available for 7.16.x now. Both my boxes are now running this.

I suspect this will be for 7.18.x as source code is available for 7.16.x now. Both my boxes are now running this.

I had read release of 7.16.1 was imminent over on the BOINC fora. Looking at Github it seems changes are still being made so with that in mind I will suggest something that I would find useful for when I go away leaving a machine running.

That is to change the number of cores in use and or which projects accept tasks contingent on running tasks finishing or date I know they will be finished by.

I more or less know this will never get through but I would like it!

I would be more than happy to test boinc as I am a visually impaired user and would like to test screen reader accessibility.