Windows Vista, Mac OS X Leopard, & Ubuntu "Edgy Eft"

[dougiemeats]

GilesGuthrie,

I too am interested as to how everything goes with VMWare 👍

jimihemmy,

The CPU usage with WMP11 could very well be the Celeron, but I am assuming the other problems could be the graphics card. Does it meet the recommended 128MB graphics memory? If not, then I would assume that would be it. You certainly have sufficient RAM to run Vista for both machines.

On an unrelated note, the Microsoft Vice President is proclaiming that "Vista is the most secure operating system in the industry." (Link)
Pretty bold statement don't you think? Especially with all the recent exploits to XP lately. They can make it as secure as they want, but it's going to come down to the users and their temptation to click on every flashy pop-up or e-mail attachment promising nude pictures of Jessica Alba.

 

[KieranMurphy]

The computer I have it on work I just used for games. Games meaning Free Cell and Minesweeper. It doesn't have internet access because the IT guys won't hook me up to the network. I can't blame them.

But even playing Minesweeper, it crawls along. It looks prettier than the previouis versions and has all sorts of bells and whistles like animations and the ability to stretch out the game size, which makes for some faster play IMO.

But it's so slow and jerky. I think it might be the FX5200 graphics card.

When I open the task manager while playing them, they're sometimes showing memory usage from 100Mb - 150Mb each. For Minesweeper and Free Cell? That's just not right.


KM.

 

[jimihemmy]

jimihemmy,

The CPU usage with WMP11 could very well be the Celeron, but I am assuming the other problems could be the graphics card. Does it meet the recommended 128MB graphics memory? If not, then I would assume that would be it. You certainly have sufficient RAM to run Vista for both machines.

Does the Celeron suck that much? Geez...
if it wasn't so much work, I'd take my P4 and switch the boards to see if it is the video card, cpu, or just the cheap mobo I use for it.

Well, the easiest swap will be the video cards which I'll be trying tonight. And if that doesn't make a difference, then maybe I'll look into a check P4 chip for this board....


(to avoid double posting since no one has posted since this) edit:

after switching cards, the Vista Aero now works with my tester. After some research, found the card that I had in it did not meet the min 128mb requirements.....The computer is still slower than my main comp, but I no longer have the stuttering when using WMP11 and other applications.

Looks like its time to get a new video card!

My onboard video of my main comp works fine, just not enough for the aero effects (which are pretty cool!)

 

[GT4_Rule]

Hmm...

I may install Vista when I buy my external HDD so that I can erase all unnecessary files from my computer HDD.

Is it possible to install Vista using an external HDD and whenever I want to boot into Vista I hook up my HDD? Or do I have to make a separate partition and install Vista onto my internal HDD?

 

[GilesGuthrie]

Well, here we go then: Windows Vista on VMWare Server

You will need (I have):
- Quick Processor (AMD Athlon64 3800+)
- Lots of RAM (1GB - not really enough)
- An operating system: VMWare supports Windows & Linux (Windows XP Professional SP2)
- A fair chunk of disk space: 16GB minimum (I allocated 50GB)
- Windows Vista 32-bit on DVD (see left)
- VMWare (VMWare Server: it's in beta at the minute, but its roadmap is to remain free)
- A network connection (Cable internet delivered into a LAN)

This guide assumes you have all of the above in place, and that you know a reasonable amount about computers. I'm not going to muck about with the real basics.

Preparation
This is limited to obtaining the prerequisites described above. Note that you're in for some hefty downloads: VMWare server is 144MB, and Windows Vista is 3.5GB. Use the Download Manager to download Vista. If the download speed drops below 10% of your connection speed it's about to freeze: pause/resume the download to recreate the connections

Install VMWare Server
This is about as hard as double-clicking the setup program. You get a few options, and it will whinge about not having Internet Information Services installed (unless you do, of course). This doesn't matter unless you wish to use the Remote Admin tools.

Reboot and open VMWare server.

Create a Virtual Machine
VMWare opens on the "Home" tab, with "New Virtual Machine" the first option. Click it, and you're punted into a Wizard. I went for the simple setup, and selected Windows Vista (experimental) from the list of OSes that VMWare knows about.

I was immediately told that I couldn't use the 64-bit version of Vista, which was disappointing because I'd already downloaded and burnt the image. Oh well. The default installation path is a "Virtual Machines" folder on the drive that you installed VMWare on.

You're asked about the hardware you want to make available. This is the hardware of the physical (real) computer that you wish VMWare to make available to the Virtual Machine. Just about the only tricky thing here is to decide on the networking. I wanted my Virtual Vista box to be able to access the internet, so I chose "Bridged", which installs virtual network adapters onto your real computer, which it uses to bridge to the Virtual Machine. The Virtual Machine then connects to your router using your real computer's physical network card, and can function fully. It's very smart actually.

You're asked how much disk space you want to make available.

VMWare then goes off and does your bidding. It'll take a while, especially if you've gone for a large disk (as mentioned before, I went for 50GB). This goes off and creates a file on your real hard disk which acts as the drive for the Virtual Machine.

At the end of the process you're left with a Virtual Machine that's off. You'll note some Play controls in the screenshot below. Ensure that the Vista disk is in one of your DVD drives, and click the Play icon.

The Virtual Machine starts, and has a bit of a think about what it's going to do. After about 10 seconds mine picked up the Vista disk and booted off it.

Virtually Installing Vista


At this point, the VMWare instance isn't very well set up, but you don't need to worry about it. Click on the instance to transfer Keyboard/Mouse to the Virtual Machine, then hit Ctrl-Alt to return to the real computer. Like I say, don't worry about it.

The Vista installation is about as easy as it comes. Finally Microsoft have attached the Keyboard Locale to the System Locale, setting the former to English (UK) when the latter was set. Shame we went into the Time Zone screen at GMT-8 though. Oh well... It takes a little while (I didn't time it, but it was more than 20 minutes and less than an hour).



Once the install is complete, you're asked to enter a username and password, and the system logs you in. You're shown the Welcome Center.



You can see that the Welcome Center is moaning about needing to set up some devices. Don't worry about it. You just install the VMWare Tools. This has drivers for all of the Virtual Hardware, and it configures everything for you.



And that's pretty much you up and running as if you had a real computer. Only in a Window (you can fullscreen it if you wish). And without all that mucking about with partitioning...



First impressions are that the performance has some lag. Let's be honest: you're not going to install Half Life 2 on the Virtual machine. Not without a lot more RAM, anyway. But VMWare is a good product, and it's easy to use.

Vista itself seems OK, although the continual prompting is annoying - especially as I'm logged in using an Admin account. I'm able to access the network shares on the real computer, and it discovered my Roku Soundbridge on the network (it's a UPnP device) very quickly.

I've typed this all in IE7 on Vista. As you can see, I've also got a bunch of other stuff open on the real computer. Incredibly, I only have 900MB of in-use memory. And the VMWare session is only taking up 177MB.

Hope you found this useful. Feel free to +Rep me if you did.

 

[Pako]

Thanks Giles, great post. Lot of work to put that together as well... Downloading the VM software now. I would rep you but it won't let me. Perhaps someone with available points can rep you...

Thanks again,

 

[dougiemeats]

jimihemmy - Good to see that you figured out what was causing the problems.

Giles - Thanks! This sounds like a good option for those that do not have a spare computer to test on.

 

[Burnout]

Indeed, nice job Giles.

Personally I've gone 100% Vista. I have it on the two computers I use everyday, and with the exception of a few bugs, it's been going pretty well.

 

[Viper_Maniac]

Burnout: What kind of bugs? Just wondering.

Also can anyone tell me if you can dual boot Vista with Ubuntu?

 

[stumpydino]

osx no doubt be as faultless as my time with my mac has been since i got it ahh peace at last

 

[dougiemeats]

News Updates

*This really isn't anything "new," but at least we know it's official now. Apple will unveil Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) at the Worldwide Developers Conference on August 7.

*Windows Vista Build 5456: Seems like this new build is much better than the public preview. Many reviews are claiming that this build is much faster and the UAC is not as annoying (you can finally delete things off your desktop without being bombarded with dialog boxes).

GT4_Rule, just curious, but have you tried booting Vista off the external drive yet?

 

[GT4_Rule]

Haven't even bought the External HDD yet. My computer is officially dead and now I'm using the library computer. Though, I'd like to install Vista onto my reformatted computer and see. But then the DVD I burned using the ISO from Microsoft isn't being read by my DVD drive - I'm hoping it's because my drive is dead, or else all the bandwidth and time that went into downloading will be wasted...

 

[Burnout]

*Windows Vista Build 5456: Seems like this new build is much better than the public preview. Many reviews are claiming that this build is much faster and the UAC is not as annoying (you can finally delete things off your desktop without being bombarded with dialog boxes).

Now this looks pretty interesting.

Consider me on the job - I'll definitely be looking into it.

 

[GilesGuthrie]

The Vista site is telling me that I already have the maximum number of product keys, which seems to be stopping me from getting the latest build. Any hints? Or are the updates that keep flooding down patching me to the equivalent anyway?

has anyone installed the Office 2007 beta?

 

[Burnout]

The Vista site is telling me that I already have the maximum number of product keys, which seems to be stopping me from getting the latest build. Any hints? Or are the updates that keep flooding down patching me to the equivalent anyway?

has anyone installed the Office 2007 beta?

I'm not sure that you can get 5456 from Microsoft publically. I do know that if you obtain a copy of the latest build, the key from the Public Beta 2 will activate it. Also, a single key can be used 10 times (I assume you've gotten three keys at this point, so you should be able to use them another 27 times, collectively).

About Office 2007: I'm currently using it as my Office suite full time - It seems to work pretty well. The only problem I've seen, and this wasn't happening to me personally, was Outlook having errors on opening without telling you, which would lead you to believe that it didn't even start, resulting in the user clicking Outlook again; eventually Outlook is open in the background several times, but the first instance is stuck so it wont open. Just end the frozen occurence from the Task Manager Process list and the next one in line will open, and automatically close any duplicates you've accidentally clicked.

Aside from that, I haven't had any problems. The new layout took a little bit to get used to, though.

 

[dougiemeats]

Burnout is correct, this build is not available to the public. I believe that this build will lead into the Release Candidate however (I'll do some research, but I think this is right).

A question for Giles: Are you able to run Vista with aero glass using VMWare Server? Not that this is important, but the Basic Interface is quite ugly IMHO.

 

[GilesGuthrie]

A question for Giles: Are you able to run Vista with aero glass using VMWare Server? Not that this is important, but the Basic Interface is quite ugly IMHO.

I haven't actually experimented with it. I assume that it's turned off by default. I did a "system performance check", and my "graphics card" got a 1, where "higher is better", so I figure it probably won't work.

I've downloaded the Office 2007 suite, including Visio Pro and Project Pro (both of which I use all the time at work). I'll report on my findings when I've installed it and played with it.

 

[dougiemeats]

I posted this a while back:

Ubuntu Edgy Eft: This is where I feel that Ubuntu (and other Linux distributions) are lacking. While one can make the argument that there are many good music/media players and photo managers for Linux, there are only few that really stand out...

While my stand on the issue remains the same, I have decided to do some research and list a few applications to compare with Apple's iLife software and Vista's similar group of applications that I listed previously. These are open-source projects and I think they have the potential to be just as good or better than their Mac/Windows competitors.

I have provided the links to the homepages of the projects. There are also some screenshots from their websites. Click the thumbnails for a larger picture.

F-Spot - Photo management/organization/light editing



Amarok - Music management/organization



Cinelerra - Movie making (although this may be more in the professional rather than consumer side)



Wired - Comparable to Apple's GarageBand



Xine - Media Player



Avimedux - Comparable to Apple's iDVD and Windows DVD Maker



MythTV - Media center experience



Since I don't use many of the above applications, they may not even be the best choices in their respective categories. However, I wanted to give an idea of what options a current or future Linux user has when it comes to their "digital life." Personally, I would love for a commercial Linux distribution to bundle a suite similar to Apple's iLife using some of these apps. MythTV looks to be the most interesting, but I have yet to look more into it. I'd like to know the requirements and the difficulty in setting it up.

 

[Burnout]

I just got finished installing 5456, and I must say my first impressions are all good - It installed noticably quicker (on my 4200RPM Laptop HD, even), and it feels over-all a lot 'snappier'.

I'll tell you a bit more once I've got the settings tucked down and software installed.

 

[GilesGuthrie]

Dougiemeats: Good post. +Rep.

All: I'm really impressed with the quality of this thread. So often multi-OS threads turn into a "mine's better than yours"-fest, but this one has been excellent. Well done. 👍

 

[GilesGuthrie]

By the way, I note this on the Windows Vista "Get Ready" page:

Please note: The Customer Preview Program will close to new orders on Friday, June 30. For registered customers who have received a Product Key the download sites will remain open until Friday, July 14.

 

[GM]

My computer is Windows, so I'm looking forward to the new Vista Edition

 

[dougiemeats]

Updates

*Giles already posted this (thanks for the heads up:tup, but new orders for the Vista customer preview are no longer accepted.

*Microsoft releases IE7 Beta 3. - Has anyone else tried it out?

*There is speculation that Vista will be delayed yet again.

This has really nothing to do with Vista, but I thought it was interesting. I got this from WinInfo.

Admitting that the current Windows architecture is getting long in the tooth, Microsoft is now finally in the early stages of creating a new OS based on an entirely new foundation. This new OS would eventually replace Windows. This news shouldn't come as a surprise, per se. But what's interesting is that Microsoft is actually talking about it for the first time. A future OS with a new foundation would better leverage the power of multicore microprocessors, the company says, but would require software-development tools that don't yet exist. Replacing Windows won't be easy, of course, and Microsoft is only at the first, tentative stages. But given how deftly the company handled the transitions to technologies such as the Intel 286, Windows NT, and x64 architecture, I can state with some certainty that we should be free of Windows by 2050, at the latest.

 

[Tedehur]

I've been a Windows user since 1991. Over the years I progressively moved from cracked to open source softwares (7zip and not Winzip, Zinf and not Freeamp, then FileZilla, Firefox....).
I have no specific problem with Microsoft, but a growing feeling that things happen in my PC that I'm not aware of and that I have no way to prevent. I just hate that /Program Files/Internet Explorer/iexplore.exe file being recreated within 5 seconds after I've sent it to the bin.

So I bought my latest laptop with no preinstalled OS and installed Ubuntu. No problem so far, all peripherals are installed, the wifi connection works fine...

I upgrade Breezy Badger to Dapper Drake last month, and Edgy Eft will be the next step. There's no way I'm going back to Windows : I'm still using it every day at work (I'm in a software company and our soft runs on Windows), that's enough for me.

 

[Crash]

The first OS i had experience with was back in the days of when our school used Mac computers (not sure about version). That was at school though. At home, my dad had purchased a computer with Windows 95. I've used Windows as the primary OS ever since.

After a few years of Windows 95, then Windows XP (never had 98 or ME), and after I heard about people downloading cracked versions of Mac OS X Intel Developer's Edition, I got interested in installing it on my computer. So I installed it and I've been enjoying the Mac experience ever since.

My friends think i'm crazy, but I'm seriously considering getting a Mac next time I buy a computer. That's how much I've grown to love OS X.

 

[dougiemeats]

Ubuntu 6.10 "Edgy Eft" Release Schedule

July 13 - Knot CD 1 (Alpha Release)
September 28 - Beta
October 19 - Release Candidate
October 26 - Final

 

[PLmatt91]

Even when Windows Vista comes out, I'm not going to buy it until ALL of the bugs are out. They ought to spend more time just making an OS and try all worst scenario's to get everything bad out of it. It's basically a new visual style theme, new icons and more little add ons, so I'm not surprised really. On the other hand, I'm sticking with Windows XP. Good, reliable and cheap OS that works, not great, but works. Mac is something I'll be getting in the far future.

 

[GilesGuthrie]

I'll probably move to Vista when SP1 comes out. Until then I'll continue to run it in my VMware sandbox. I'm considering getting another 1 or 2GB memory to run a whole LAN virtually.

 

[GT4_Rule]

I probably will get Vista along with my new computer in a few years. Until then, I'm XP Home, or Vista Beta 2.

I need 1.3GB more space in my HDD to install Vista Beta 2.....

 

[dougiemeats]

...the Basic Interface is quite ugly IMHO.

For those that do not have a capable machine to run Aero glass, or simply prefer not to; it looks like they've changed the Basic interface to something more pleasing. (Note that the picture is incorrectly labeled as "Windows Standard." They in fact changed Windows Basic and it is different from Windows Standard.)



I think it looks good.