• Use gunzip to uncompress the file if your browser has not done it for you.
• chmod +x the executable.
• put the executable into a separate directory (say, boinc/).
• run the executable. The first time you run it you'll need to attach it to a project, e.g.:

      boinc_client -attach_project http://setiathome.berkeley.edu df0d93e384a2700f70e0bc45a1b2c96c
      

Instructions on running the core client (command-line options, etc.) are here.

You'll probably want to arrange to run the executable each time your machine boots or you log on. Some examples follow.

Automatic startup on Mac OS X

• Instructions from Paul Buck's BOINC Owner's Manual.
• Instructions from Berki Yenigun, deadsmile at minitel.net
• Running BOINC as a system service on Mac OS X by Ivan Stegic.

Automatic startup on Unix

Users have contributed scripts for automatic startup of BOINC on various versions of Unix:

• Red Hat Linux. (includes general instructions for installing on Unix systems).
• Linux with KDE.
• Red Hat 9, should also work on Solaris
• Gentoo Linux (from Gabor Nagy)
• HPUX (mostly relevant to UNIX in general)
• An init script for running BOINC under SuSE Linux (9.2 and 9.3)