What are the requirements for Vista? (not that I want to get it-I want to compare it to Linux requirements )

These are the official requirements from Microsoft.

The "minimum" requirements listed on the bottom there are pretty much a laugh. You definitely won't be running Aero acceptably on such a machine.

Compared to Linux, they are astronomical requirements. Even running Beryl won't require hardware hardware like that.

What really bothers me the most is the space required for the installation. 15GB seems rather excessive I think, and although on my notebook I have a 256MB Nvidia GeForce card, it is because I could not find any nvidia card for my notebook with lower memory, unless it was a non nvidia card (ati with 64mb), and that is not an option for linux in my view. Still, 15GB is just unheard of I think. I can't imagine MacOS being anywhere near that either, I doubt the upcoming OSX upgrade will require that. Plus, a FULL installation of Slackware is ~3GB, which was about the same for 2000 and XP, so what is the rest of the 12GB? Maybe I shouldn't ask.

dang. thats just rediculous! i wonder how many bugs this version has...

As I understand it, the high HDD requirement is due to temporary files and databases that Vista makes during installation. Once the system is actually completed the installation, it is not much, if at all, larger than XP. But that is only what I have heard, I have not myself installed Vista.


As for OS X, it is pretty small in the grand scheme of things. You could install it on a 2 GB drive fairly easily. Probably need to leave off printer drivers and the alternate languages, but you wouldn't have to strip out any core functionality.

What are the minimum requirements for Linux?

a case, a processor with at least 450MgHertz, 10 GiB HDD, and the rest is self explanatory-linux pretty much installs on anything you can call a computer. (the requirements vary as to each individual distro)

A Vista install is right around 15 gig. And it doesn't get smaller when it is all done. It refused to install on a 20 gig spare drive I had, and cancelled the install. It and Office 2007 consume some 17 gig of room. This is not a retail install but RC1. Retail installs might be better, but I haven't heard of it yet.

From what I've read the basic Vista version is an insult to everyone's intelligence. MS should get an award for sheer arrogance and cheek for issuing such crap.

No, they're less than that. I'm posting on here with a 333mhz cpu, 2G HDD. I've got Linux on my router, too.

Which is why I'm not entirely certain what you aim to get out of this thread. You _know_ the minimum spec for linux is way below those of vista. Hell, they're way below those of Win95. But the systems are massively different. Comparing minimum requirements is only valid when the use of those resources, and the output, is vaguely similar.

This PC is running linux at about the speed it ran Win98. Sure, I could make it quicker. I could remove X and use just a terminal. Or I could use something like fluxbox rather than XFCE. But then it's not fair to compare it to Win98, since it becomes a very different system - it looses the prettyness and the intuitiveness.

So, what you should be asking, is what in the way of resources does vista need in order to achieve X in terms of prettyness and Y in terms of intuitive-ness, and what does Linux need in order to do the same. But then you get bogged down in discussions of how to measure these.
Yes, I know that running Beryl doesn't need anywhere near the same resources as Vista wants. But so does everyone else.

So far all I've found the big "advantages" of Vista to be are 1) flashy graphics (that Apple has already done by the way) and 2) a more advanced NTFS system to aid in faster searches. If you know where you put all your files though, you shouldn't need a faster search. However, I keep forgetting that 99% of the world is computer illiterate

The only reason why Vista will be successful seems to be because it comes pre-installed... But everybody already knows that too I guess.

If Vista really takes up 15GB, I really don't see any reason at all to buy it, considering its price and the fact that I would only need it to play the "latest games".
I'd rather play all the games I never had time to play (which now only cost 5-15 euros) with my current windows XP.
(or buy a Wii )

edit:
Apparently, it only needs 6GB plus an unknown amount of space:
"The core installation takes up a little over 6GB of disk space, plus additional space for a paging file and hibernation file – the exact size of these two files varies depending on how much RAM is installed on your computer."

Seems acceptable considering that the minimum disk space you get with new computers nowadays is 80GB...
But it's still nothing more than a gaming system to me. That's why I would compare the price to gaming consoles. ^^

You do really need to nail down what sort of machine you will be comparing the Vista specs with.

I mean, the minimum requirements for Linux would be an i386 processor and ~8 MB of RAM. That is a powerful enough machine to run the kernel and it's support software. It could be used for a number of light tasks pretty well.

But clearly we aren't comparing a Linux install on a 386 with a Vista machine running Aero.

I guess your best bet would be to compare the minimum requirements of Vista with a distro that is using Beryl and other high end programs. Something like Sabayon Linux.

the problem is: if you want to install vista (because you got it for free and want to only use it for a few days in the year*g) on a hd where you already have linux, e.g., in my case opensuse 10.2 you free your hd to get let's say 12 GB out of 60 for that shit. Ok, fine. You use GParted or some other partition program and format that partition as e.g. as fat32. Ok, in turn, fine*g. Now you start the installation and "Vista requires 15 GB of space..." although the temp-files for installation are not more than 6 GB!!! all other hardware requirements were fulfilled, I checked it: I installed xp again, no problem within 35 min, I also checked it with this fuc**** "windows vista upgrade advisor", result: hardware is fine, expect hd-space.

But, now the best: if you take a virgin hardware drive, unformatted and let vista create and format a new partition of size 10 GB on that huge disk --> it installs!!! (but were are the 15 GB which are required?). hahaha, good tools, guys...

I am really wondering why BG is so rich....*g