Run Vista on your Intel Mac with Q
Parallels Desktop is all the rage in Mac virtualization these days, but it doesn't offer one major feature (yet): the ability to run Vista on an Intel Mac (believe it or not, this will be useful to many a Mac user). Sure, they've promised it's coming on their blog, but who wants to wait for Parallels when the open source virtualization project Q can already do it?
That's right: if you have a copy of the public beta 2 of Vista (which unfortunately closed not long ago), you can check out their documentation (which boldly welcomes Parallels switchers) with simple instructions for installing Vista as a virtual machine. However: I don't know yet what is and is not supported under Q. Parallels has had issues up until this latest beta with supporting a lot of USB devices, amongst other things. Vista requires some heavy video card support, so I don't know how well it will run depending on how much support Q (and the QEMU project it's based on) has baked in.
While I snagged a copy of Q already and installed Ubuntu in it, I'm still turning over every half-empty box in this new townhouse trying to find my Vista images. If you readers beat me to the punch, by all means, share your experience in the comments.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Alex P said 11:19AM on 8-19-2006
I need a intel mac!
Powerbook G4 is showing its age fast.
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Fraser said 11:23AM on 8-19-2006
I ran XP in Q, it was OK, but the mouse was a little unresponsive, so i had to move back to BootCamp, as i needed it for graphics work.. Otherwise Q is great, really, really easy to use. Love It!!
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Cycomachead said 11:32AM on 8-19-2006
I would try Vista but I signed up for a copy to late, well I didn't even get to sign up!
I had Ubuntu almost working and then it got screwed p!
After hours of work!
And I think I will try something again
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CyBeR said 11:44AM on 8-19-2006
Of course you can also run it natively (bootcamp-method), and get the flashy Aqu.. Eh, Aero effects.
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David Chartier said 11:57AM on 8-19-2006
#4: The last instructions I saw for getting Vista to run natively involved blowing away part of the partition scheme that Boot Camp creates for dual booting OSes. Have you seen better instructions since then, that don't require such a messy hack? I would love to test (and blog) them, as destroying the boot scheme simply isn't an option for a lot of Mac users out there - including myself.
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Jorge Asch said 12:19PM on 8-19-2006
I installed Vista by destroying such partition. I don't see what the big fuzz is, I easily re-created such partition when I reinstalled OSX last week.
BTW, Microsoft is giving away free copies of Vista, by filling up a questionnaire.
http://www.microsoft.com/india/offers/vista/quiz.aspx
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Brendan said 12:22PM on 8-19-2006
Anyone have any Vista torrents? I have Azureus, but no Vista. I just downloaded Q, but no Vista :(
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Jeff said 12:28PM on 8-19-2006
I'm sure it's useful to run Vista, or other OS's for some, but besides them, who cares?
After using OS X, Tiger, I don't care to run any other non-Apple OS ever!
I might change my mind in the future, but right now, to hell with Microsoft and Linux.
Windows is expensive, buggy and unsecure. Linux is difficulut to run and too many distros.
Both are impractical IMO.
If I can't do what I need to do on a Mac, then I don't need to do it.
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Jamie Harris said 12:43PM on 8-19-2006
Love question 5 of that quiz.... The glass effect in Windows Vista is called; answer D is Aqua :-)
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Brendan said 12:46PM on 8-19-2006
@ 9, I answered Aqua on purpose ;-)
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brif said 12:56PM on 8-19-2006
That quiz is really silly... As silly as Vista is ;-)
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Stephen said 1:01PM on 8-19-2006
I downloaded a copy of windows vista and burned it to a dvd. I have never used it and I am tempted to give it a try with my new MacBook and Q. Could anyone guide me through? Once done i'll try to give some screenshots.
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Daniel said 1:15PM on 8-19-2006
To Stephen and anyone else about to install Vista on the MacBook:
Be aware that many of the Mac drivers from Boot Camp will not install properly in Vista. Audio will not work, which was the greatest irritation to me. And it took several hours to finally get most of the other things working that XP supports. Also, battery life was terrible. I was averaging under 2 hours in Vista, when doing the same activities in XP or OS X would give me 2:45 and about 5, respectively. Also, if you decide to delete Vista, you cannot use Boot Camp to create a new partition and go back to Windows. You must erase your entire disk (OS X included) and start all over again. Also, if you're using the base model with 512 MB RAM, don't even think about using Aero. You'll need to use the Classic view for it to be bearable, but even then it's slower than XP.
I can't remember all the details because I did this at the beginning of June. I used my MacBook 1.83 GHz, base model.
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David Chartier said 1:31PM on 8-19-2006
#12: Sorry, I forgot to link the instructions from Q's wiki in the post. I've edited to include the link, but here it is again:
http://www.kju-app.org/proj/wiki/WindowsVistaPublicBetaTwo
Sorry about that.
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NitRam Den Gale said 3:36PM on 8-19-2006
Does the AirPort connection work with Q? (I am installing Ubuntu now...)
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Serious.Business said 10:56PM on 8-19-2006
the ability to run Vista on an Intel Mac (believe it or not, this will be useful to many a Mac user).
I don't take issue with the idea that running Vista on an Intel Mac will be useful to "many a Mac user. I don't believe its true the ability to run a BETA version of Vista on an Intel Mac is that useful to "many a Mac user", which is all anyone can run at this point. Once Vista is actually released, who knows how many of the packages will run it?
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Jason Wade said 12:03AM on 8-20-2006
Not entirely related, but the comments just put the idea in my head that perhaps part of the reason for the delay of Leopard is so that Apple can ensure that Boot Camp will fully support the final release of Vista.
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Stephen said 6:26AM on 8-20-2006
Cheers Daniel. I have the 2.0Ghz but I think it'll still be slow, so I won't risk installing vista. I only wanted windows because I have ms office for windows and not mac.
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Dav said 7:34AM on 8-20-2006
I tried installing it in Q on my MacBook a couple of weeks back, but it was slow as hell. Took about 4 hours to decompress the image, i.e. install it to disk, something that takes about 30 - 40 mins natively. Then it hung there for some reason and had apparently crashed. Didn't bother to try since, since I need my CPU cycles for other things.
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Thomas said 8:33AM on 8-20-2006
I have not set my hand on both vista and Mac but i guess it sound pretty good. if feel good. i will have a try on both.
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