Trying aros on my laptop...

[kickstart]

I want to give a try to aros and have some questions, on the laptop i have windows 7 installed, how can install aros with dual boot with w7?

Laptop have realtek audio and gma 950 graphics card, are audio and graphics compatible with aros?

Thanks.

[Kesa]

You read my mind. I was going to try this in the next few weeks once my uni is finished and have time to mess around with it.

I have an acer aspire laptop.

I also plan to buy an external harddrive maybe next week so i can try it (disk partioning?)

[kickstart]

Disk partitions, i supose... this time i dont want adventures with a sad end so thats the reason for ask.

[Cammy]

I run Aros on my Acer Aspire laptop and an unbranded netbook. I can tell you that Intel GMA graphics are supported, but only through an external monitor at the moment! But never fear, the 24bit VESA driver is fine and it's still super fast.

Audio and ethernet both work on my Acer Aspire, so I can go online and browse the web with OWB (hopefully this gets a new name soon). USB works on both, so I can play games and fire rockets with a control pad.

You can easily try the Icaros and Broadway boot CDs and see if they will run on your system before installing them. Unfortunately I don't know anything about resizing partitions and dual booting with Windows, I wiped that virus-ridden crap off my laptop the day I got it and installed Aros and Linux, using Aros to make its own partitions then using Linux to add its own in the rest of the space. I wouldn't risk partitioning the hard drive from Aros unless you don't mind losing everything on the drive if I were you. It's possible to install it on a removable USB drive though, so you may want to try that after confirming it works from the CD/DVD.

To install Aros, you boot it up from the CD and click on the Install Aros icon in the Tools drawer. This will bring up a GUI where you can determine the size of your partitions and choose where to install the software and boot menu. It's pretty simple really, once you manage to run it from the CD you can be pretty sure it'll run from your HDD too.

Just remember it's still in development, so be ready for a bumpy ride.

[Kesa]

Thanks Cammy. I think mine is the aspire 5315 or something like that. It's just a cheapo i got from JBHI.

My main concern is being able to continue running windows 7. I'm really comfortable using it and like it a lot. I also need it for uni work for programs like word and excel so using AROS fulltime isn't an option.

What kind of time frame are we talking about before we can expect AROS to be fully functional enough to replace windows, etc?

I saw the youtube video showing screen dragging and was really impressed by it. Not because of the dragging but because of how the desktop looked. It looks better than it did before when i looked. It looked very cartoonish so i'm glad that's changed. For the first time i am now considering switching to AROS :-)

I will definitely use Broadway. I'm always watching dvds on my laptop.

[Heinz]

I want to give a try to aros and have some questions, on the laptop i have windows 7 installed, how can install aros with dual boot with w7?

Laptop have realtek audio and gma 950 graphics card, are audio and graphics compatible with aros?

Thanks.

Like cammy said, you should try an AROS Live CD to see if your Hardware is properly supported. ICAROS or BROADWAY should be fine.

If you want to install AROS on the same Harddrive with windows, you need to make your windows partition smaller. You can then install aros on the free space.

A good tool to edit partitions without erasing them is GPartED LiveCD

But you should make a Backup of your important data anyway.

[clusteruk]

For those who want to try Aros, may I recommend waiting a few days for Icaros 1.2.5

It WILL be the best Icaros ever, and has cured some issues that were in 1.2.4

We are just beta testing it now.

[bloodline]

I want to give a try to aros and have some questions, on the laptop i have windows 7 installed, how can install aros with dual boot with w7?

Laptop have realtek audio and gma 950 graphics card, are audio and graphics compatible with aros?

Thanks.

Don't bother installing AROS, just boot from the LiveCD. That way your Windows setup will be unharmed and you get to play with AROS

[mihcael]

AROS has no problem dual booting with win7, i have done that myself.

Rough procedure is
-Install win7 but leave some room on the drive that is free and unpartitioned. 5-10 GB should be plenty.
-Install AROS selecting the option "Use free space on drive" to maintain the windows partition.
-AROS will install GRUB, detect the win7 partition and create a boot entry in GRUB for win7 and AROS

[kickstart]

Don't bother installing AROS, just boot from the LiveCD. That way your Windows setup will be unharmed and you get to play with AROS

Yes i try with the live cd but the slow access to the cd make the experience a bit slow and with some freezes.

Thanks for all replies.

[bloodline]

Yes i try with the live cd but the slow access to the cd make the experience a bit slow and with some freezes.

Thanks for all replies.

In that case, I used PartitionMagic to resize my Windows drive and install grub.

[kickstart]

Diferences between broadway and icaros?

[Cammy]

Icaros includes heaps of programs, games and utilities already installed, ready to use as your new desktop OS. Broadway also includes programs and games, but is more media-oriented, and uses the cool new media front end AMC, which is a menu for browsing videos, music, games and more. It would be perfect for a media PC hooked up to an entertainment system, run by remote or wireless control pad.

[Lando]

I no longer have any PC with an optical drive.  Can I copy the Live CD files to a USB Flash Drive and boot from it?

[mihcael]

@lando

I think it is more in volved then just copying files, i think there is a guide showing how to do this on the icaros homepage. (see cammy's sig for link)