Windows vs Linux - My First Cryptocurrency Mining Rig

I recently published a blog post with details about Building My First Cryptocurrency Mining Rig and towards the end I reached out about my indecision on whether to run the mining rig on Windows or Linux.

Although not a lot of interest was sparked - in fact, I haven't had any comments as of yet (haha) but I've been doing a lot of reading, a lot of youtube'ing and I've joined a lot of cryptocurrency forums to try and gauge all the different opinions before making my decision - and actually, I think I am now comfortable with the decision that I've made.

So Windows or Linux?
Well before I give that away, I think I should explain what factors I took into consideration and why they impacted my decision. Hopefully, this information will help others that are also researching about building their first mining rig.

Factors To Consider

You don't want to set up a mining rig to later find out you used the wrong operating system and have restricted yourself or have made a very unstable rig - so you should look at all the different options and one of the most important would be which operating system to install. Let's face it, you don't want to spend all day setting it up to then a month down the line, having to format and boot it on a new OS, do you?

Below I've listed a few factors that I've taken into consideration when making my decision on which OS to build my mining rig on.

• Installation Time
• Setup + Configurations
• Maintenance + Repairs
• Remote Access + Scalability
• Performance

Installation Time

The Windows OS is considered to be a "heavy" install due to the size of the installation file. By default, Microsoft does enable a lot of its features and built-in applications for ease-of-use but having to download and install all the add-ons it's built-in with means it can be a very time-consuming process. Installing Windows on my mining rig will take me about 4-5 hours. That's everything from the initial download to the final configurations of the setup process.

It's ok just having to install it the once but what about when I'm setting up the next mining rig, or the rig after that... and the one after that? - Time is Money... and that is a fact!

The Linux Ubuntu OS is considered to be a very "light" install with many of the additional features not included in the basic install by default. In fact, once it's downloaded you can have the installation process completed in about 20-3minutes.

Setup + Configurations

Setting up Microsoft Windows wouldn't be too hard as I've built many desktop PC's and I'm very comfortable and confident using the Windows operating system.

The Linux Ubuntu operating system would be completely new to me so this would take me quite a while to setup - especially if it means I have to enter lines of code in Terminal.

Maintenance & Repairs

The Linux Ubuntu operating system is considered to be extremely robust and stable. Once it is setup you should be able to sleep easy knowing you've built a rig on a strong operating system that can withstand the test of time.

However, the initial setup would not be as easy as a Windows setup (for me anyway) because it would require some Terminal code inputting. If it does ever fail at any point or require repairs, I wouldn't know where to start when trying to troubleshoot a problem on a Linux OS.

Who do you call at 2 am if your rig doesn't want to boot up + you don't know Terminal?

Windows is really easy to setup and although it's not considered to be as stable - if it does ever break down or require any repairs or maintenance, I would feel quite comfortable troubleshooting any issues myself.

I heard that a Windows-based mining rig can crash after a week of GPU mining 24/7 and this did worry me.

However, I've since had confirmation from several 'rig farm' owners that say their Windows-based rigs can run for 20-25 days without requiring a reboot. They leave the "Auto-Update" on and adjust "Windows Startup" menu so that after a windows update, when the system does reboot - the mining software will restart and continue mining without any user-interaction required.

Remote Access + Scalability

Remote access with Windows is real easy using third-party applications such as Teamviewer. It can be done on a Linux machine as well but does require Terminal commands and I'm not comfortable with Terminal, so I wouldn't be keen linking-in every day to check up on the system as I would with a Windows set-up.

The benefit of the Linux setup really comes in when we think about scalability.

Once you've got a perfect configuration you can download the install configuration to a removable USD stick. When you're ready to set up another mining rig, simply insert the USB and install from the backup and you're good to go!

Performance

Linux is a lightweight install and won't put much load (if any) on the system's resources. However, the Windows OS is considered a 'heavy' install and does put more load on system resources. It's reported that mining on a Linux system returns a better hashrate than on a Windows operating system and although it does make sense, I've not seen any evidence to suggest this is true.

In fact - after speaking to 10-15 rig farm owners about their views on performance, the majority said that they believe it to be true - that there is a slight performance gain to be had by building a mining rig on a Linux Ubuntu-based operating system; however, the gains are negligible.

So - What Operating System?

It has been one of the toughest decisions I've had to make because I do intend on growing my farming rig as fast as possible and I like the feature of Linux where I can copy an install to another rig so seamlessly and knowing I have a robust OS I can rely on.

On the flip side, I don't know a word of Terminal coding so if it does require maintenance, breaks down or requires an update - I wouldn't really know where to start and choosing Linux would mean a lot of my time will be spent learning the language.

Windows would be really easy to setup and maintain and I wouldn't lose sleep if it breaks down because I'm comfortable with troubleshooting Windows-based issues. But it's going to be really annoying as my rig farm grows and I have to do multiple installs.

After careful consideration - I realised I don't have the time to learn a new language at this stage and so, I've decided to build my first cryptocurrency mining rig on a Microsoft Windows Operating System.

I'm undecided on whether it will be Windows 7 or Windows 10 but we'll leave that for another day... unless you have an opinion you'd like to share, then please leave your comments below!