My first experience of distributed computing was distributed.net. I have contributed a few years of processing to their RC5 (encryption challenges) and OGR (mathematical curiosities) projects. More recently I switched to Grid.org, which is run by many of the same people. This seemed more worthy as it involves searching for cures for cancer and other diseases.

Grid.org is not available on Linux, but some people have made it run by devious means. For simplicity I was just running distributed.net on my Linux box. I had heard about Folding at Home a while back, but never got around to trying it. This is another medical project with similar scope to Grid.org, but wider support for non-Windows platforms. Well I've tried it and it works on this old PC. The question is whether it will complete a work unit before the preset deadline. There are ways around this that I may have to investigate. I don't really want a PC on all the time at the moment due to the noise and power consumption. For now I don't need that facility either, so the PC will be on when it is needed. The deadline is the middle of next month and I'm away for work in between, so I may miss it.

I've thought for a long time now that all those PCs around the world that just do nothing whilst waiting for the user to do something should be put to some use. There are lots of possible projects you can run that do not affect normal usage and may end up doing some good.