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Beginner's Guide to Darkcoin Operating Systems and Mining Programs

heph

New member
*Work In Progress** will expand and add pictures

This guide is to be used in conjunction with the Beginner's Guide to Building a Mining Rig.

After you have you're mining hardware put together it's now time to choose an operating system upon which you will base your mining platform. From a performance standpoint all of the options are pretty much equivalent, but different platforms have various strengths and weaknesses that could factor into your decision on which you would like to use.

This guide is intended to be an overview of the various operating systems that have darkcoin mining capabilities, the mining programs available on each operating system, and the strengths and weaknesses of those mining programs.

To Begin
There are primarily 3 operating systems which you can currently utilize to mine Darkcoin. They are Windows, OSX (Macintosh), and Linux. Each Operating system has its own wallet and its own flavor of mining programs.
Windows
The Windows environment is stable, has a large an active communtiy, and supports a couple different mining programs. The main negative with Windows use is that it costs money when other operating systems are free. Many people will still choose this option due to its familiarity and stability.
The normal mining combo for windows miners is to use Darkcoin CPU Miner 1.3 along side of one of the GPU miners. This will produce the best overall mh/s rates.

Speed: AMD 290x + I7 4770k = 3 - 3.5 mh/s

Pros: Stability, Active community, frequent updates, very easy to set up (no compiling)
Cons: Windows costs money. zlib.dll file may have to be manually added to get GPU miner working. Anti-virus conflicts.​
OSX


Linux
The consonant foil to Windows; Linux' greatest strengths are Windows' greatest weaknesses. Linux is free, and does not truly require antivirus software. Once the O/S is installed and optimized it tends to run smoothly with good stability. Linux comes in a variety of flavors called "distros" and each offers it's own strengths and weakness. For this article we will cover the distros that are primarily used by Linux miners. Some distros have very active communities while others are not particularly active.
Commonly used linux distros:
Ubuntu (Ubuntu, Lubuntu, Kubuntui, Xubuntu)
Debian
Fedora
Mint
Mageia
Linux CPU Mining programs:

Linux GPU Mining programs:

BAMT
BAMT stands for "Big A Miner Thing" which is a dumb name, but BAMT is actually a cool program. It is a linux mining option but differentiates itself from a normal linux O/S in that it is intended to runs self-contained from a flash drive. In this way you can simply plug in the flash drive, boot the computer from the flash drive, and have a dedicated miner running in minutes regardless of the operating system installed on the machine initially. This is how it is supposed to work theoretically, but as with most linux distros there is often some configuration issues that need to be sorted out in the beginning. Set up is essentially "easy" from a linux standpoint, but this could be considered difficult for the average user who's lifetime computing environment has been Windows.

BAMT Mining program and istructions for Darkcoin (v1.6):

Pros: Free, Do not have no install onto machine (run from flash drive)
Cons: Set up, some PC's have issues booting from USB​
 
Last edited by a moderator:
*Work In Progress** will expand and add pictures

This guide is to be used in conjunction with the Beginner's Guide to Building a Mining Rig.

After you have you're mining hardware put together it's now time to choose an operating system upon which you will base your mining platform. From a performance standpoint all of the options are pretty much equivalent, but different platforms have various strengths and weaknesses that could factor into your decision on which you would like to use.

This guide is intended to be an overview of the various operating systems that have darkcoin mining capabilities, the mining programs available on each operating system, and the strengths and weaknesses of those mining programs.

To Begin
There are primarily 3 operating systems which you can currently utilize to mine Darkcoin. They are Windows, OSX (Macintosh), and Linux. Each Operating system has its own wallet and its own flavor of mining programs.
Windows
The Windows environment is stable, has a large an active communtiy, and supports a couple different mining programs. The main negative with Windows use is that it costs money when other operating systems are free. Many people will still choose this option due to its familiarity and stability.
The normal mining combo for windows miners is to use Darkcoin CPU Miner 1.3 along side of one of the GPU miners. This will produce the best overall mh/s rates.

Speed: AMD 290x + I7 4770k = 3 - 3.5 mh/s

Pros: Stability, Active community, frequent updates, very easy to set up (no compiling)
Cons: Windows costs money. zlib.dll file may have to be manually added to get GPU miner working. Anti-virus conflicts.​
OSX


Linux
The consonant foil to Windows; Linux' greatest strengths are Windows' greatest weaknesses. Linux is free, and does not truly require antivirus software. Once the O/S is installed and optimized it tends to run smoothly with good stability. Linux comes in a variety of flavors called "distros" and each offers it's own strengths and weakness. For this article we will cover the distros that are primarily used by Linux miners. Some distros have very active communities while others are not particularly active.
Commonly used linux distros:
Ubuntu (Ubuntu, Lubuntu, Kubuntui, Xubuntu)
Debian
Fedora
Mint
Mageia
Linux CPU Mining programs:

Linux GPU Mining programs:

BAMT
BAMT stands for "Big A Miner Thing" which is a dumb name, but BAMT is actually a cool program. It is a linux mining option but differentiates itself from a normal linux O/S in that it is intended to runs self-contained from a flash drive. In this way you can simply plug in the flash drive, boot the computer from the flash drive, and have a dedicated miner running in minutes regardless of the operating system installed on the machine initially. This is how it is supposed to work theoretically, but as with most linux distros there is often some configuration issues that need to be sorted out in the beginning. Set up is essentially "easy" from a linux standpoint, but this could be considered difficult for the average user who's lifetime computing environment has been Windows.

BAMT Mining program and istructions for Darkcoin (v1.6):
Pros: Free, Do not have no install onto machine (run from flash drive)
Cons: Set up, some PC's have issues booting from USB​


Hi,
could you please make a installation and gpu mining guide for Linux / Ubuntu 13.10 for begginers. That would be the first actuell latest working guide in net. I am trying to run sgminer for darkcoin, since a week but without success.
At the end I could see all gpus with ./sgminer -n but when I tried to run it, there were many errors. It started with -k, kernel. After I deleted almost every thing in .sh file, it gavae last pool error. After trying many other pools I was sure its something else.
Someone else recommended in another guide to install AMD-APP-SDK-v2.9-lnx64.tgz ./Install-AMD-APP.sh. After doing that there was clash between opencl and Adl.
Darkcoin seems to be much difficult then Scrypt mining or Vertcoin mining.
I would be very thankful, if you could help me respectively other new commers that we could contribute and conduce darkcoin to success.
Thankyou in advance
 
Dear all,
We have recently launched a Crypto currency (bitcoin and litecoin) exchange registered and operated in singapore .
You need to make a post under "Exchanges" about your exchange with more detail and information. This post is in the wrong place.
 
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