I would think having a single version of BOINC that works in Linux from 12.04 onward would be a nifty thing. Especially since it doesn't have the Jumping Task Page during RPC Events Bug. If you prod enough people they will confess to having their Tasks Page Jump to the bottom of the page with the newer versions of BOINC. Every version of BOINC above 7.2.47 that I compiled from BOINC Code has this Bug. I have had a couple people use the 7.2.47 App with New versions of Mint and it didn't require any additional packages to be installed to work, and it works with very little effort providing you don't strip the Execute bits from it beforehand. It seems to be a winner to me. My three machines haven't had a hiccup since I started running the App. All of them still have the Active tasks at the Top of the Tasks page in full view. It seems such a trivial thing until you have to adjust the page Everytime you want to look at your Active Tasks. Version 7.7 lasted around two days before I had had enough...much longer than 7.4.22 ;-)

There seems to be a problem with the older versions of BOINC and the newer versions of Ubuntu and Mint. Somewhere between 7.6.33 and 7.4.53 it becomes impossible to stop boinc by just stopping the Manager. Stopping the Manager leaves boinc and the tasks running. By suspending the project you can stop the running tasks and then Exiting the Manager just leaves boinc running by itself. The newer versions of BOINC don't seem to have this problem in Ubuntu. Even with the Newer versions of BOINC there seems to be a problem when running the newest Mint with BOINC in the Home folder. The first time you start the Manager it seems to work normally until you try to stop it, which sometimes still leaves the tasks running. If you choose to 'Shutdown connected client' before closing the Manager that will stop the tasks, but, then there is a problem starting the Manager again. I don't have this problem in Ubuntu 16.04, where 7.6.33 and 7.8 work normally. I'm not sure what the problem is with Mint, others say it works fine with the Repository version of BOINC. At this point I'm going to stop trying to get BOINC 7.8 to work from the Home folder in Mint, obviously there is some problem there that doesn't exist with Ubuntu.

I've tried compiling static versions of wxWidgets and BOINC to remove any outstanding dependencies, but it seems there is always at least One dependency that must be installed before running. Even with the previous noted problems the newer versions of BOINC are much better than the current Development version 7.4.22 which I consider non-usable. I would recommend 7.4.22 be replaced as soon as possible with 7.6.33 or higher. In my tests there doesn't seem to be any noticeable difference between 7.8 and 7.6.33, either one would be a welcomed change over 7.4.22, with the same added note about being tested with Ubuntu 'may work with others'. I'm certainly not having much success with Mint 18.2. I'm not having any problems with Ubuntu 16.04.

The target audience for the release version in Linux should be users whose distributions have old packages or don't have BOINC at all. If there are libraries required to run BOINC the user must know of this beforehand and the install script needs to check that they are installed or inform the user what is missing. In my opinion building a Linux release that is target on Ubuntu and derivatives and relies on shared libraries provided by Ubuntu is superfluous because we want the user to install the Ubuntu package where we know that there is an active maintainer who keeps the package up to date.

Those are good points. But we haven't had Linux releases in ages and TBar found bugs within half an hour after starting 7.8.0 so I think we should have a beta version released for Linux as well, even if it's for Ubuntu. Maybe with statically linked wxWidgets since that seems to create the most troubles. It still might work on other distros. After 7.8 is released we have time to work out a better plan for v8.

While I still have Linux running it is mostly for crunching and I rarely use Manager on Linux. So that's one tester less.

source release for Linux to tell package maintainers that they should use this updated version as was requested not long ago.

I think source packages are becoming a thing of the past and everyone just grabs the sources from repository. And if someone really wants a source package I think GitHub can create them automatically. Some way to reach all the packagers would be nice though. For example, there could be some changes needed in how BOINC is packaged and packagers might not notice if all they watch is the version number of the latest release.

I've been trying 7.8.1 on Debian thanks to Gianfranco.

The bad news is it has the jumping tasks bug and the event log loses the time format. The good news is my Ryzen has doubled its drystone benchmark from 7.6.33 :-)

Apart from that it seems to be working normally under Stretch (I'm using an Nvidia card, I haven't tried it on an iGPU machine and I don't have any machines with AMD cards).

---

MarkJ

I thought I'd post the results of some recent compiles using various versions of static wxWidgets. Basically, in Ubuntu 16.04.3 the only version of wxWidgets that would result in a working 'Simple View' is 3.0.3.
I tried wxWidgets 3.1 with both 7.8.2 & 7.6.33 and the compile always ended with errors concerning webview, wxWidgets itself compiled just fine and webview was enabled. The following is a list of BOINC and Widget pairs that would fail to produce a working Simple View;
1) 7.4.22/3.0.1
2) 7.6.33/3.0.2
3) 7.8.2/3.0.0
4) 7.8.2/3.0.1
5) 7.8.2/3.0.2

The following produces a working Simple View in 16.04.3;
1) 7.2.47/2.8.12
2) 7.6.33/3.0.3
3) 7.8.0/3.0.3
4) 7.8.2/3.0.3

All versions result in the Skin Menu & Activity Menu taking Two clicks to update the changed button status in 16.04.3 but work with One click in 14.04 & 12.04.
All versions, Except 7.2.47, will result in the Tasks Page scrolling to the bottom during Updates.
As far as I can tell, there isn't any noticeable difference between 7.6.33/3.0.3 and 7.8.2/3.0.3.
I was just wondering, does this infer BOINC 7.8.x is expecting wxWidgets 3.1? https://github.com/BOINC/boinc/blob/client_release/7/7.8/COPYRIGHT

wxWidgets Library Licence, Version 3.1
// http://www.wxwidgets.org/

Debugging the Manager with a wxWidgets issue is always a PITA which is why I put such things on the backburner for someone who is more knowledgeable about this. I have wxWidgets 3.0.2 installed on Debian and no problems with simple view (using the repository provided package which is dynamically linked).

Your saying you used static versions of wxWidgets. Last time I tried to create a statically compiled manager it segfaulted immediately at startup. Could you please post the commands you used to compile the static wxWidgets library as well as the commands used to build the static manager?

The version number you quoted refers to the version of the license not the version of the software. As far as I'm concerned the Manager should be usable with either version of wxWidgets 3.0. The automated Linux build uses 3.0.2 while the Mac build uses 3.0.0 and the explanation is that the Mac maintainer does not see the need to update while the former Windows maintainer updated to 3.0.2 with 7.6.33 which I just copied for Linux because I like to use the most recent stable versions available.

Both Keith and myself, running Ubuntu 16.04.3, have tried the copy of the 7.8.2 Manager you made available using the repository wx3.0.2 and in both cases the Simple View fails to retrieve the current status. The 7.8.2 version I compiled with static wx3.0.2 also fails. The 7.8.2 Manager I compiled with static wx3.0.3 works for both Keith and myself in Simple View. Try the 3.03 version and see if it works on your machine, http://www.arkayn.us/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=ksshc2voao7fisb3lvirq0kpc2&topic=197.msg4519#msg4519

I have tried a number of different versions of wxWidgets and found the Older versions have trouble finding some libraries, the same problems exist with the older BOINC releases. My compile lines have been built to where they will work with the Older versions as well as the newer versions. I have tried a number of different Options with wxWidgets without any noticeable effects, you could use fewer Options than the last line I used without any trouble.
./configure --with-gtk=2 --enable-compat26 --enable-unicode --enable-webview --enable-webviewwebkit --with-opengl --with-libnotify --disable-shared --host=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu --target=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu --build=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu LDFLAGS="-L/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu" GL_LIBS="-L/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu" GLU_LIBS="-L/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu" GLUT_LIBS="-L/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu"
I recently added the Options; --enable-compat26 --enable-unicode --enable-webviewwebkit --with-libnotify
They don't appear to provide any improvement, but are in the last 7.8.2 build even though the build appears unchanged from the previous builds.

The BOINC line uses the last version of wxWidgets I used, you have to change the version numbers to use different versions;
./configure --disable-server --enable-static --enable-bitness=64 --enable-dependency-tracking --host=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu --target=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu --build=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu --with-ssl="/usr/local/ssl/lib" --with-wxdir="/home/tbar/wxWidgets-3.0.3" --with-wx-config="/home/tbar/wxWidgets-3.0.3/wx-config" CPPFLAGS=" -I/usr/include -I/usr/include/libnotify -I/usr/include/gtk-2.0 -I/usr/include/GL -I/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu" LDFLAGS="-L/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libOpenCL.so.1"

I usually use Ubuntu 12.04.5 for the compiles, although I have tried a few in 14.04.5 and 16.04.3 without any noticeable difference. The last 7.8.2 build was in 12.04.5. I've haven't had any trouble running the builds in 12.04, 14.04 or 16.04 on different machines.

Last time I tried to create a statically compiled manager it segfaulted immediately at startup.

I may have stumbled upon that reason. It seems there has been problems with the libpng versions between distros. I ran into the problem about Ubuntu 17.04 switching to libpng16 instead of libpng12 that earlier versions use. It appears the wxWidgets builtin version is now libpng 16.20, I'm going to try a build using the builtin version and see if it works in 17.04. Just add --with-libpng=builtin to the wxWidgets configure line and try a build with that, my current one uses the libpng12 from Ubuntu 12.04, your machine may not like that.

The change to the built-in libpng library seems to have worked well. Even better, I was able to track down the source of the problem causing the Tasks page to jump to the bottom during RPC updates Seems the source is a commit aimed at an apparent Bug in an older version of wxWidgets, I'm using static wxWidgets 3.0.3 in my builds, https://github.com/BOINC/boinc/commit/6479868b7c4c2efa87ff69d9e0910d43d2c33df7
The new BOINC 7.8.2 build has that commit removed, now the Manager behaves normally. The current build is in the same location;
http://www.arkayn.us/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=ksshc2voao7fisb3lvirq0kpc2&topic=197.msg4519#msg4519