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Inside Vista's Image-Based Install Process
KrispyGlider writes "Vista's installation process is dramatically different from any previous version of Windows: rather than being an 'installer,' the install DVD is actually a preinstalled copy of Windows that simply gets decompressed onto your PC. It is hardware agnostic, so it can adjust to different systems, and you can also install your own apps into it so that your Vista install becomes a full system image install. APCMag.com has published an interview with a Microsoft Australia tech specialist on the inner workings of it as well as a story that looks at some of the pros and cons of image-based installs."
I've had installs of Linux remove my Windows MBR and force grub as the default, its not just windows
Just to play Devil's Advocate here, but why SHOULD they facilitate the use of other OS'es? Look at the customers who make up 99% of their base:
1. Home users who buy a machine with Windows pre installed. No worries about dual boot here.
2. Corporate users who load a custom Windows image on new machines. No worries about dual boot here either.
ALSO, if it really is just an image it would be a simple matter to just load it onto a partition then setup dual boot using GRUB. Anyone who feels they NEED dual boot probably already knows how to do it. Most modern Linux distros do a pretty good job of it for newbs too.
Very very very few people NEED dual boot. Some do. Most do not. From Microsoft's point of view, why should they facilitate it when the people who really NEED it (i.e. developers) will have no problem either setting up dual boot or using virtualization?
The final linked article starts with this dubious sounding statement:
... The Vista install DVD is, in fact, just one big system image.
The bottom is about to fall out of the market for imaging tools like Symantec Ghost
But then immediately contradicts itself by pointing out:
But this flexibility only extends to the installation of Windows itself. To clone a full system with apps installed, Symantec Ghost or a similar utility must be used to create that image.
People don't use Ghost to make a copy of an unconfigured fresh install of Windows, they configure it first, then Ghost it. This new installer will have no effect whatsoever on sales of Ghost, or any other imaging software. After such a terrible start to the article, I'm not sure it's even worth reading the rest.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Ease of installation is not an applicable issue for most of the computing public, who buys computers with the OS already installed.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
So is this revolutionary install concept an exact copy of what we see in Ubuntu?
MS is just anticipating virtual rootkits. Having an image to compare to the installed system will provide a check of subverted files etc.
You should try Vmware. (i believe the player and server version are now free). I have a server that runs fedora 5 and vmware GSX server. Installed in vmware (as guests) is windows 2003, windows XP and windows 2000 all on the same machine.
Each server runs as if it were an independent machine, if one goes down it doesnt take the whole box with it, each machine bridges to the main interface and has full network connectivity, viruses that affect one guest dont affect the others. I have been running this configuration for about 4 years and havent looked back to dual boot madness since..
Bitch you KNOW the side.. WORLD MAFUCKIN WIDE..
Booting another OS from the NT boot loader is significantly more difficult than using a Linux boot loader GUI setup tool.
Why would you expect any different, not just from microsoft but from ANY company out to make money? Why make it easier to use your competitors' products?
Does your Ford come with an instructon book to tell you how to fit a Nissan engine? No it doesn't because there's no good business case for them to do that.
Conversely the kit car you built from parts probably can be adapted to take ford or nissan engines.Why? because the reason you get a kit car is the joy of building it, not which company sold it to you
Comparing Microsoft OS and Linux and saying who's is like asking who would win in fight between Darth Vader and Capt Picard.
Essentially pointless because they live in different universes.
Still, anything that makes installs easier is probably a good thing, at least to the average user.
While I agree in principle, generally speaking the average user will not be installing Windows, or any other OS.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Why would you expect any different, not just from microsoft but from ANY company out to make money?
Because the idea that dual-boot somehow causes them to lose money is a false one. They already sold you a copy of Windows, by making it difficult to use that alongside another OS, what are they expecting to acheive? Selling you two copies of Windows to satisfy your dual-boot urge?
Clearly their only motivation is to be anti-competitive, which is what one expects from a convicted monopolist.
I'm partly responsible for an image that goes on around 5-600 machines at a Midwestern University College lab. We tried RIS when it was out, but althought it was cool, it was simply not practical. The savings of having 'one' image really didn't outweigh the impracticality of it taking 2-3 hours per workstation per lab.
This is no different; currently it doesn't support multicasting and so although it's 'revolutionary' (read: RIS) it still doesn't beat the ability to push down and image to a workstation is less than 20 minutes...oops, did I say a workstation, I meant a lab.
It still won't beat Ghost any time soon, IMO.
'Nerd' is not a synonym for 'Linux user'. This may be a surprise to you; for many others it is not.
Damn it, one of the things that always annoys me about Windows is that it's NOT as simple as copying a bunch of files.
This is mostly due to their inane and out-dated drive lettering scheme.
In Linux (or any Unix), I can move my installed system to a different drive or partition just by copying it. I can install an entire system within a folder of another system. All I have to do is change my drive mounts, add some symlinks, or use chroot, and I can put the entire system anywhere and it's as if nothing changed.
When my Dad bought a new harddrive because his old one was dying, we tried in vain to copy his old system over to the new drive. First we tried imaging it using "dd" on a liveCD, but that didn't work. Then we tried making a new filesystem and using "cp" to just copy the whole thing. That didn't either. We didn't want to spend money on Norton Ghost, just for a one-time thing.. He ended up having to re-install and re-activate XP, re-install all his MS Office software he'd had some trouble with installing in the first place, and finally setting up a whole new system. Just because he wanted to replace his drive!
That, compared to the number of times I've moved my Linux system without a single hitch... I can't believe people put up with this crap. Now instead of keeping things simple, they're moving even FURTHER away from a file-based approach?
I thought Microsoft finnally caught up with a GUI installer for windows. ;)
I love reading comments from people who know just enough to post a smug put-down, but not quite enough to explain cogently why something is a silly idea.
I don't believe TAR includes ACL and metadata information related to the filesystem. Or does it?
You're probably thinking of the Fat32 limit. NTFS can handle files in the terabytes. A DVD can only hold around 4.2Gb anyway. If MS is that pressed for space, they'll just give you 2 DVDs - maybe with extra Weezer videos or whatnot. I'd also assume Vista would boot into some sort of installer for the actuall installation. Attempting to install from XP I'd guess would just ask you to reboot (much like OSX installs).
The tar file format, like most unix things has undergone several revisions and branches. In POSIX.1, a new format, called the Pax Interchange Format, was created as a backwards compatible extention of the tar format, that allowed for storing of arbitrary metadata. How this metadata is used is naturally left up to the system's implementation of tar and pax. I don't know how widely these extentions are used. I know that in Mac OS 10.4, metadata including resource forks are supported, but I think they implemented them using thier normal flat-file hacks (._myfile holds metadata for myfile), and not the pax extentions. This man file has a little more information.