Can climatprediction.net still run on Windows XP? it could more than a decade ago with a nice graphic of the world spinning.

Yes, but there's only been Linux tasks for a long time.
You can run WINE in Windows, and use that to run the Linux tasks.

I think Les means you can run Virtual Machine software such as VirtualBox or VMWare Workstation in Windows, then install Linux in that to run Linux tasks. However, running virtual machines in Windows XP is probably a no go.

If you wanted to try to run a climate model in Windows, you may be able to run the African Rainfall Project at World Community Grid.

Whoops, yes.
That's what I meant. I was thinking the other way around.
It's been so long since I did any of that.

And you'd need to add more memory to the XP machine.

Oracle VM VirtualBox is not supported* on WinXP. The earliest version is Windows.8.1.

On a windoze host, don't bother with VirtualBox to run a Linux virtual host and BOINC/CPDN if you're limited to 8GB memory. It works, but it's probably not worth the effort to run one or two CPDN tasks. You'll need at the very least 16GB memory.

To be usable as a 'puter with four of eight virtual i7-3770 cores running CPDN, in an ubuntu VM hosted by Win10, we have found that 32GB memory is the practical minimum for Win10 to be happy wihen we try to use heavy M$ office applications (excel & word).

Good luck with whatever you choose to do.

* 1.4. Supported Host Operating Systems
https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch01.html#hostcpurequirements

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To be usable as a 'puter with four of eight virtual i7-3770 cores running CPDN, in an ubuntu VM hosted by Win10, we have found that 32GB memory is the practical minimum for Win10 to be happy wihen we try to use heavy M$ office applications (excel & word).

What on earth have they done to Word that it is a heavy application?

What on earth have they done to Word that it is a heavy application?

I've been using Word for documentation and reports ...

1. Creating and editing multiple large-ish documents (10MB to 100MB). With 16GB physical memory and VirtualBox/ubuntu/CPDN running four tasks in a 4-cpu VM (11 GB memory), editing the documents would result in an unpredictable Black Screen of Abeyance. The hypothesis is that the graphics processor would run out of memory and swap to PC memory; as there is no 'available' PC 'memory, it would immediately swap out to the SSD. The display may come back if you are patient, maybe not. Often I'd have to end the Word process and start again. With 32GB of physical memory it's now usable with CPDN running in the 4-cpu VM (20GB memory), Africa Rainfall on three threads in Win10, and Word documents don't disppear into the BSOA.

2. Microsoft PDF reflow. - convert and edit PDF files with Word. A great tool when you don't have the source file and your pdf converter is licenced for Win-XP. However, one processor (thread) runs at 13% and Word ignores you until reflow finishes opening the source file. Small PDFs are quite quick, some files could take up to 30 seconds, however the largest PDFs I've had to regularly open (60MB file, mainly text) takes two-four minutes to open and convert. The design guide PDF (12MB file, 120 pages with lots of images) takes 20 minutes to open and 20 minutes later it's still chuntering away to convert the file to Word. I gave up on the design guide as it's quicker to open the native PDF and then screen grab/paste the words/image ...

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OK, I get it. There are times on my Linux box that even with 32GB of RAM I need to suspend tasks to make my machine responsive.