# Folding@home SMP2 -  Wine vs VirtualBox



## Ralph_Ellis (Oct 12, 2010)

After experimenting with running Folding@home in both a VirtualBox Linux x64 machine and under Wine, I have come to the conclusion that most people would be better off running Folding@home SMP2 under Wine.
1) You can install the Wine whether you have a 32 bit or 64 bit FreeBSD installation.
With VirutalBox, to run the 64 bit Linux installation, you need to have a 64 bit FreeBSD installation.
2) VirtualBox requires a certain amount of dedicated resources to run - 512M to 1024M of memory, a piece of your video display memory and hard disk space. Under Wine, the memory requirements are dynamic but are typically less. There is no demand on the video card. Hard disk space is limited to the program and the work file.
3) VirtualBox needs a dedicated kernel module to be loaded. You do not need this with Wine. This means less overhead on your system.
I have hit some issues with power management and the VirtualBox installations but if you keep power management settings simple, it should run well. I just make sure that my computer BIOS is set to only blank the screen as opposed to turning off the monitor.

Instructions for setting up Folding@home under Wine and VirtualBox are here:

For PC-BSD users

http://forums.pcbsd.org/showthread.php?t=13294

For FreeBSD users

http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=17091&highlight=folding@home

For instructions on setting up Wine on amd64 FreeBSD

http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=13982

Have fun


----------

