An exercise in futility: installing Windows Vista on PS3

by Andrew Yoon { Aug 5th 2008 at 10:00PM }

Emulating operating systems is never really a good idea. Yet, mopx0 has decided to give it a try with Microsoft's latest operating system, Vista. To say it runs slow would be an understatement, as booting the resource-heavy OS takes 25 minutes on the system. To run Notepad emulated on the PS3 via Linux takes a whopping 12 minutes. It's not really practical, but shows the incredible dedication the hacking community has when tackling the strangest of projects.

If for some crazy reason you want to give it a try, read here.

[Via Engadget]

Tags: hack, homebrew, linux, vista, windows-vista

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Gaucho @ Aug 5th 2008 10:10PM

If someone actually wanted to try doing this they have bigger problems then difficulty of the attempt.

Alex @ Aug 5th 2008 10:11PM

"why...? 'why' you ask.
BECAUSE I CAN!"

Averna @ Aug 5th 2008 10:22PM

lol @ donations

Turn AF off!?

kevin @ Aug 5th 2008 10:25PM

ehh this is old news

The_Doctor @ Aug 6th 2008 6:45AM

Why make comments like this? I see these "old news" comments all the time. It may be old news to you sir, but others who are not so tech-savvy may benefit from this. If it's not worth your time, just don't comment.

golden sapphire @ Aug 5th 2008 11:52PM

well il be damned... and to think i wanted to do this

JaseH @ Aug 5th 2008 11:55PM

Good song, Seether's singing voice is pure win.

____________________________________
JaseH.

iamkid @ Aug 6th 2008 1:04AM

i heard about this a while ago...it sucks that it takes so long, otherwise it might actually be useful... maybe

iamkid @ Aug 6th 2008 1:06AM

i heard about this a while ago...it sucks that it takes so long, otherwise it might actually be useful... maybe

Greg @ Aug 6th 2008 1:32AM

Great ! So now I can play Crysis on my PS3... or pong...

PSN: SamuraiBubba @ Aug 6th 2008 4:54AM

I don't even want Vista on my computer, why would I want it on my PS3?

proog @ Aug 6th 2008 4:59AM

I'm actually surprised that the PS3 can manage to run that. I know it's far too slow to... use. He must have some very large swap partition, unless it's simply using the physical memory, in which case I'm very impressed. He should have tried running Crysis instead of Notepad.

Coops @ Aug 6th 2008 6:26AM

It'd be more impressive if he was running Vista straight through the PS3, not emulated in linux. There's software for linux (I think) which can allow you to do that anyways.
The reason it runs so slow is that the PS3 doesn't have enough memory - it's one thing I dislike about it 'cause it ends up struggling when I try and do more than one thing at once, like running the web browser with a few open pages whilst listening to music. It's actually probably why it won't allow you to do things like install or copy whilst doing other things.

TheHeadFL @ Aug 6th 2008 8:49AM

It has less to do with not having enough memory and more to do with the fact that the PS3 is not an x86 architecture.

There is no way that one could run Vista natively on the PS3, since it is a PowerPC architecture. Therefore, a true emulator (not like VMWare) is required, which will do 100% emulation of the x86 processor, which is incredibly slow.

Tools like WINE that let you run Windows binaries natively don't (and won't) work on PS3 for the same reason. WINE just provides a compatibility layer for existing x86 binaries, it does not attempt to do a real-time binary translation to PowerPC.

Ysleiro @ Aug 7th 2008 1:38AM

I do agree that the architecture is key.

But come on, you are trying to run vista, emulated on 256 RAM !!! Big problem !!!

It's not just Vista. OSX would have a similar problem too.

Steve Childs @ Aug 6th 2008 9:14AM

Geek-o-translater:

Input: "...but shows the incredible dedication the hacking community has when tackling the strangest of projects."

Output: "Some people have really stupid ideas and the other people have waaaay too much time on their hands."

Draco @ Aug 6th 2008 9:36AM

I wonder if they could install Windows 95, then we could play all the old school DOS games, run all the NES and SNES emulators, all while using your DUALSHOCK3.

I imagine since Windows 95 only takes like 32MB of ram it should be possible.

TheHeadFL @ Aug 6th 2008 11:18AM

You can do all of what you just named without trying to run Windows 95.

I run NES, SNES, and DOS emulators (DOSBox) on my PS3 natively in Linux. I use my DualShock 3 wirelessly with the NES/SNES emulators and I use keyboard and mouse on the old DOS games like Space Quest, Kings Quest, and Indiana Jones.