[gentoo-user] Sony Viao Vista and Gentoo
Hello, I seem to have an adventure every time I set up a dual boot laptop with Windows and Gentoo. The last time I found out that HP will ship you an OEM install CD so after formatting the hard drive (deleting the windows hidden partition) you can put windows on any partition you want and not have the MS running partition conditioning on the linux and grub sectors. Grub is the bootloader/manager. I do not trust MS, but, we still have critical windows software we have to use from time to time. Sony does not offer such a OEM CD. They say I can purchase the Vista CD at retail prices (not fond of this option). Sony does purport to have a good web site for individual device drivers at esupport.sony.com, although I have not used it (yet). Sony also said that XP will run on this new VIAO (model PCG-384L) laptop. I not so sure Vista is better than XP. I want grub as the bootloader. Right now my best option seems to be: purchase a copy of vista or XP from the local university ($30) and install it on a new partition and use Grub as the bootloader. Install Gentoo too. Have I missed anything? Any other comments or insight is most welcome. James -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Sony Viao Vista and Gentoo
On 7/19/07, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello, I seem to have an adventure every time I set up a dual boot laptop with Windows and Gentoo. The last time I found out that HP will ship you an OEM install CD so after formatting the hard drive (deleting the windows hidden partition) you can put windows on any partition you want and not have the MS running partition conditioning on the linux and grub sectors. Grub is the bootloader/manager. I do not trust MS, but, we still have critical windows software we have to use from time to time. Sony does not offer such a OEM CD. They say I can purchase the Vista CD at retail prices (not fond of this option). Sony does purport to have a good web site for individual device drivers at esupport.sony.com, although I have not used it (yet). Sony also said that XP will run on this new VIAO (model PCG-384L) laptop. I not so sure Vista is better than XP. I want grub as the bootloader. Right now my best option seems to be: purchase a copy of vista or XP from the local university ($30) and install it on a new partition and use Grub as the bootloader. Install Gentoo too. Have I missed anything? Any other comments or insight is most welcome. James -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list Depending on what software you need to run, running Windows in VMware can work quite well. I assume that Sony gave you a restore disc that will erase everything and restore your computer to its original state. You MAY be able to use this disc to install windows on a VMware virtual machine. However I have a feeling the restore disc will not be happy about installing in an environment that does not match the hardware of your laptop. It's worth a shot though. Julian -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Sony Viao Vista and Gentoo
Last year I bought a Dell Inspiron that did not come with any software cd. The drive, came with XP pre-installed as well as a recovery partition that you could use to restore the XP partition to factory. Of course it runs Gentoo. What I did was: 1. Boot with a live cd (or better yet RIPLinux on a USB stick). 2. Back up MBR, parition table, and partitions to DVD, network or external drive. 3. Use ntfsresize to shrink the XP partition, make sure it still boots. 4. Use the space left over from ntfsresize to create partition(s)/install Gentoo. 5. Install GRUB on the MBR. Worked for me. YMMV. I could have also removed the utility partition to get more space, since I do have a backup. But I left it on there as I don't really need the space. -- Albert W. Hopkins -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
