[NTLUG:Discuss] folding at home

[Sally Welch]

I have recently downloaded software to participate in the distributed
computing effort to analyze folding proteins.
http://folding.stanford.edu/

Evidently proteins that incorrectly fold contribute to Alzheimers,
Parkinson's, some cancers, and other diseases.  This project is using
the processing power of millions of personal computers to analyze
various proteins, their folding, and misfolding.

I have the software currently running on Slackware and Ubuntu boxes.
To use both CPUs on a dual processor system, I just run the program a
second time, easily configuring it as the second copy of the program.

To get the Ubuntu program running, I had to download the older of the
two Linux versions available, but I didn't spend a lot of time
diagnosing the problem I was having.

It isn't getting in the way of running my browser, though the network
seems to be a bit slow, with 3 copies of the program currently running
on the two computers.  It seems to be a good, legitimate cause.  Does
anyone else have experience with this effort?

-Sally