Eero Ahonen wrote:
> I'm not sure about CD-ROM, but at least Grub is able to boot via PXE.

I've done more experimenting with this, now that I have a Vista machine 
I can wipe and restore easily.  I wouldn't recommend trying this without 
a complete-machine backup.

At least on the 64-bit OSes (Vista x64 and Suse11 x64) it seems that the 
default MBR for either will now try to boot the active partition. That's 
nice.

And in spite of the baroque advice on the intratubes, it's pretty 
trivial to set up the same mechanism to get Vista to boot Linux without 
any extra software necessary (assuming you don't have only a recovery 
disk or some other lossage like that).

Install Vista. If it's already installed, shrink the partition from 
inside Vista (since it is claimed Linux messes that up on Vista's NTFS).

Install Linux, but don't set the active partition or install grub to the 
MBR. (I install it all in one primary partition, just because it's easy 
enough to back up only what you want to in Linux.)

Figure out which boot block boots Linux. In my case, it's the boot block 
of that one primary partition. It's probably the boot block of whatever 
/dev/sda? that holds your root partition. Use dd to make a copy:
dd if=/dev/sda2 bs=512 count=1 of=/media/my-usb-stick/linboot.bin

Boot back to Vista. (If you messed up, boot the Vista disk, go to 
recovery, start a command prompt, and use diskpart to set the Vista 
partition active.)

Copy x:linboot.bin to (say) the root directory. (Where x: is your usb 
stick, obviously.)

Then, tell Vista about it, which goes something like this:
bcdedit /create /d "SuSE 11 Linux" /application bootsector

This will print out a GUID, which you should copy into the copy buffer.
Then bcdedit this, pasting in the GUID for each "<paste>"

bcdedit /displayorder {current} <paste>
bcdedit /set <paste> device partition=C:
bcdedit /set <paste> path \linboot.bin

And if I remember right, that's all you need to do. The next boot will 
give you a choice of Vista or Linux.

The advice on the intertubes is to download a replacement for bcdedit 
with its own version of grub (which doesn't work, at least with my 
suse). It worked when I told it to boot via LILO oddly enough. :-)

One of these days, I'll get around to making my own site for putting up 
stuff like this I've figured out that can actually be searched.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Eero Ahonen wrote:
> To exactly how many pieces of hardware have you lost the support on
> Linux while upgrading to a newer version of Linux? 

That's a very good point.

The webcam is the only one I can think of. (See 
http://kerneltrap.org/node/3729 not that it affected me personally)

(I resist the urge to be snarky and talk about losing hardware to new 
drivers. 
http://fixunix.com/linux/539688-linux-will-destroy-your-hardware.html
Pretty funky story there.   ;-)

I also wonder about the people who use the closed-source video drivers - 
do they really keep working with new kernels and ABIs and all? Or does 
ATI release a new driver periodically? I honestly don't know, so I'm 
honestly asking.

As well, going from 98 to an NT-based kernel killed a lot of software 
that bypassed the OS and (for example) frobbed the serial ports 
directly. And I wouldn't bet that every video and sound card worked 
smoothly on every upgrade of OS, even from 2000 to XP. One of the nice 
things about Matrox video cards is they (at least used to - haven't 
checked lately) would release drivers for new cards and old OSes, and 
for old cards and new OSes.

> If your hw works with Linux now, it'll work for the number of years,
> even if you do update your software. As far as I've understood, if your
> hw works with 2k or XP, you can't be sure it'll still work with Vista.

I'm not sure about Vista 32-bit, but Vista 64-bit requires signed 
drivers that have passed MS's testing, because MS was tired of taking 
the flack for crappy drivers taking out the OS. If the HW vendor wanted 
you to buy a new card rather than keep the one you have, you're pretty 
SOL. :-)

Again, sure, your hardware may continue to be supported, but that's 
because the drivers are open-source. They don't "keep working" for new 
releases, they "get fixed" for new releases. If someone doesn't fix it, 
it won't work after they change the ABI again.

The closed-source nature of Windows drivers means there's a much smaller 
group of people who can fix drivers for the hardware, and they usually 
don't have too much incentive to do so.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Warp wrote:
>   Not so with Windows. Microsoft *must* sell a completely brand new version
> of Windows each n years. Of course people wouldn't buy the new version if
> it was basically identical to the old version, with just internal invisible
> improvements, and perhaps a few new programs (which would work in the old
> version anyways). 

I agree.

Actually, I've found a bunch of new good stuff in Vista. It's just hard 
to explain to someone who only uses the computer casually. How do you 
explain to someone who knows nothing about computers why the backup 
utility is superior in the event of a disk crash, for example? Or why 
RAID support is improved?

MS has to not only do stuff to improve an OS that's already pretty darn 
mature, but also has to make it visibly enticing at first glance, 
regardless of what's under the hood.

Of course, MS also has to make it nicer for hardware sellers, since 
that's something like 85% of their sales last I heard. So driver stuff 
has to be easier, installation has to be easier (even tho most users 
never see that), branding has to be easier, and so on.

It's a funky world, comparing commercial to free software.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Darren New wrote:
> It's just hard to explain to someone who only uses the computer casually. 

For example, try to explain to someone who doesn't know the difference 
between a root account and a normal account why UAC is a good thing. :-)

As far as I can tell, UAC is sudo and nothing more or less, except that 
even the root account is required to use sudo to do rooty things, unless 
you turn it off. Seems like a reasonable comprimise.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Darren New wrote:
> I also wonder about the people who use the closed-source video drivers -
> do they really keep working with new kernels and ABIs and all? Or does
> ATI release a new driver periodically? I honestly don't know, so I'm
> honestly asking.

No, and in fact Ubuntu 8.10 currently has worse video performance than 8.04
on nVidia cards. Until nVidia makes an updated driver to work correctly
with the kernel used on 8.10.

Or at least that's what I understood.

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> MS has to not only do stuff to improve an OS that's already pretty darn 
> mature, but also has to make it visibly enticing at first glance, 
> regardless of what's under the hood.

  And in many cases they only can do that by breaking the basic engineer
rule "if it works, don't fix it", as well as making the UI so heavy that
you need a supercomputer to run it.

  AFAIK Windows is the only OS out there for which each version has been
slower than the previous version (even with all the eyecandy turned off).
Clearly their priorities are not in efficiency.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On Sat, 01 Nov 2008 13:25:52 +0200, Eero Ahonen wrote:

> That must be the cheapest bonk-line LJ's. All real-printer LJ's I've
> seen have talked PostScript and various PCL versions and are supported
> very widely.

Could be - I don't recall where I saw it, but yeah, in general, if it 
support PCL or PostScript, you're good to go.

Jim

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On Sat, 01 Nov 2008 13:29:30 +0200, Eero Ahonen wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> 
>> Oh, that's not Grub, that's SYSLINUX - Grub is hard-disk only to the
>> best of my knowledge.
>> 
>> 
> I'm not sure about CD-ROM, but at least Grub is able to boot via PXE.

Is it?  That's new...I've always used PXELinux...

Jim

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On Sat, 01 Nov 2008 13:19:44 +0200, Eero Ahonen wrote:

> To exactly how many pieces of hardware have you lost the support on
> Linux while upgrading to a newer version of Linux? The difference
> between Linux and Vista here is that if your device worked with Zoot
> (RedHat 6.2) and 2.2 -series kernel, it most probably still works with
> newest SuSE and 2.6 -series kernel - at least if you're still able to
> physically plug the device in.

Arguably, that's only if the driver is part of the kernel build.  I've 
got an old flatbed scanner here that the kernel drivers were no longer 
developed for after 2.2 kernels.  No matter, because I got a new scanner.

If the code is no longer maintained, then changes in the kernel can (and 
do) prevent the module from building at all.

Jim

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On Sat, 01 Nov 2008 09:38:26 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Darren New wrote:
>> It's just hard to explain to someone who only uses the computer
>> casually.
> 
> For example, try to explain to someone who doesn't know the difference
> between a root account and a normal account why UAC is a good thing. :-)
> 
> As far as I can tell, UAC is sudo and nothing more or less, except that
> even the root account is required to use sudo to do rooty things, unless
> you turn it off. Seems like a reasonable comprimise.

Except that something like kdesu asks you once for the root password (per 
run), but UAC asks you incessantly (in my own experience - which is 
somewhat limited) whether or not you want to allow X, Y, or Z to happen.  
It's not content with just asking once.

Jim

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