Vista

[AGI1122]

Well after some trial and tribulation I finally got vista installed on my machine. What a pain in the butt, the download got corrupted multiple times until I used a seperate download manager besides the one microsoft installs into IE.

Anway, I have a question that I was hoping that somebody from the OS side of things here might know. I have windows xp, and ubuntu installed on this machine. Now I know that I can dual boot xp and ubuntu. But I want to triple boot xp, vista, and ubuntu. Only problem is that Vista isn't recognized by the grub installer so I don't know how to get it to boot from grub. Any help would be appreciated.

[mystran]

Assuming they are all on first IDE-bus, master-disk, and say, first three partitions, then you'd have something like this in your /boot/grub/menu.lst or /boot/grub/grub.conf (which ever is in use)

Code: Select all

# Boot Ubuntu
title  Ubuntu
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/bzImage root=/dev/hda1

# Boot XP
title XP
root (hd0,1)
chainloader +1

Probably something before those, but anyway... add at the end of file a similar entry for Vista:

Code: Select all

# new entry for Vista
title Vista
root (hd0,2)
chainloader +1

That's about it, assuming Vista keeps bootloader in the beginning of partition, which would be the normal thing to do.

The grub device naming logic is (device,partition) with device being:

hd0 = first IDE, master
hd1 = first IDE, slave
hd2 = second IDE, master
...

Partition numbering starts from 0, so 0-3 are primary partitions, and 4+ are logical partitions or whatever they are called..

[Cjmovie]

Lucky...after I had to stop the download once I got access-denied on everything but German/Japanese version (which I don't intend to use). I'm still torrenting, and the non AMD64 build nonetheless....

[AGI1122]

I am at 35% for the 64 bit version download. I am using getright to download it.

And thanks mystran, after a little bit of playing I got all 3 os's running. Although I am going to have to do it all over again since I am going to replace the 32 bit version with the 64 bit version once the download is complete.

The ammount of space vista requires is crazy. 15GB is a huge ammount.

[srg_13]

I've downloaded it (used that activeX control that Microsoft recommended). I was a bit worried leaving IE open for 14+ hours... but I don't seem to have had my computer hijacked.

Vista looks to be like Mac OS X take away all the good parts. The Minimum System requirements are huge, and 15 GB for a minimal install (although you can't really install anything but a minimal install).

-Stephen

[AGI1122]

Yeah it's requirements are steep. Luckily I have made good recommendations at best buy to get customers good computers that will support vista.

I actually went back to the 32 bit version of vista for now... too many issues with software and drivers. My sound card doesn't work in the 64 bit versions even though there is a driver. PC-Cillin beta for vista doesn't work, installs just fine, but stalls when I start it.

The only benefit was that it was faster. But speed at the loss of security and sound just isn't worth it yet. But that's why this is beta, to iron these things out.

[mystran]

Yeah it's requirements are steep.

I guess Microsoft has figured out that most of the time people upgrade computers and operating systems with similar cycle.

Those people that don't keep their computers up-to-date, rarely bother buying new operating system either. Rest of the people either buy new OS with new computer, or keep (at least one of) their system(s) current enough that they'll be able to install most of anything available at any given time.

Then there's ofcourse business (and other organizational) environments where everybody runs the same software, and upgrades OS more or less at the same time, but in these environments there's usually about 3 to 6 years of lag from new OS release to deployment, and there's usually some upgrade cycle for hardware as well, which almost automatically ensures that all hardware is compatible by the time a new OS is deployed.

So I think there's little reason for Microsoft to bother trying to keep hardware requirements low, since few people would install it on out-dated computers anyway.

[AGI1122]

Yeah it's requirements are steep.

I guess Microsoft has figured out that most of the time people upgrade computers and operating systems with similar cycle.

Those people that don't keep their computers up-to-date, rarely bother buying new operating system either. Rest of the people either buy new OS with new computer, or keep (at least one of) their system(s) current enough that they'll be able to install most of anything available at any given time.

Then there's ofcourse business (and other organizational) environments where everybody runs the same software, and upgrades OS more or less at the same time, but in these environments there's usually about 3 to 6 years of lag from new OS release to deployment, and there's usually some upgrade cycle for hardware as well, which almost automatically ensures that all hardware is compatible by the time a new OS is deployed.

So I think there's little reason for Microsoft to bother trying to keep hardware requirements low, since few people would install it on out-dated computers anyway.

You would be surprised. I work in computers in Best buy and have seen people with purely crap hardware wanting to upgrade to xp. I had to say to them it wasn't cost effective to upgrade and suggest a new computer instead. The same thing will happen with vista sooner or later.

[guest]

15GB is a lot of disk space regardless of whether or not everyone has a 200GB drive. Are you sure that is all just Windows?

My current complete Linux setup is only about 8GB with KDE and a plethora of development tools and documentation libraries. [and X Compositing]

[AGI1122]

Even though the requirement says 15GB it has only used 10GB so far on a fresh 32 bit install. I don't know how much it took up for the 64 bit version though.

With 10GB taken up that leaves 5GB for your personal stuff, drivers, software, etc.

My ubuntu linux install only takes up 4GB, so yeah 10GB is alot.

[Warrior]

Vista is on it's beta release, it has a lot of debugging symbols on so it's expected to take up more space now then when it is released. You should try Vista with an open mind and remember that it is beta software.

Now, as far as the requirements go: I really didn't expect the RAM requirements to go to 1GB, but as for the steep video requirements you can turn off the Aero 3D Accelerations and have the desktop rendered with GDI+ in Aero Basic or Windows Classic mode (Classic looks cooler )

If you're still testy Microsoft has a tool which checks your hardware and shows which features of Vista you can/cannot use.

[AGI1122]

512MB is supposed to be the minimum. My computer's mem usage is at 30% on 2GB. And all I am doing it just posting this message.

And yes I do realize that it's a beta, but the whole point of the beta is to find stuff about it that sucks and complain about it so they fix it.

[Colonel Kernel]

My computer's mem usage is at 30% on 2GB. And all I am doing it just posting this message.

Most of that is probably disk cache.

[Warrior]

512MB is supposed to be the minimum. My computer's mem usage is at 30% on 2GB. And all I am doing it just posting this message.

And yes I do realize that it's a beta, but the whole point of the beta is to find stuff about it that sucks and complain about it so they fix it.

I think the minimum was raised to 1GB. Atleast last time I checked the req site. Anyhow it didn't run too bad for me 1.12GB of ram on my 9600 256MB vram. 2.20GHz P4.

Somethings will take getting useto and Vista has a LOT of dialogs. When they fix UAC I'll be happy with Vista as a main OS. (Also considering it gets a well needed speedboost since I get random slowdowns and adds more hardware compat)

[AGI1122]

I will be more excited about vista once the 64 bit version is more stable.

The minimum is still 512MB still. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/g ... pable.mspx

That page lists all the requirements for vista