Vista will dual boot fine. Most linux distros use the grub boot loader. Once Mint is installed, it will have a grub screen and give you the option to boot into either OS when you boot the computer. Just take your time and read everything the installer is telling you. It will have a few options. One of them will shrink Vista, and install Mint in the freed space. Just be careful and don't erase Vista. I have the AR5007. It works great with ndiswrapper. If all you have is wireless, then you can get the drivers in Vista and move them to Mint. All commands are ran in a terminal:Menu>Accessories>Terminal. After installation to your HD, get the drivers
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wget http://blakecmartin.googlepages.com/ar5007eg-32
This will download them to your /home folder. Extract the drivers in your home folder
Install the driver
Load the driver into the kernel
Add ndiswrapper to your module list to be loaded at boot time
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echo “ndiswrapper” | sudo tee -a /etc/modules
Blaclist the native driver which doesn't work(problem with new kernel) and keep it from being loaded at each boot
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echo “blacklist ath_pci” | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
Go to Menu>Administration>Hardware Drivers and disable ath_pci and ath_hal drivers. After a reboot, you should be good to go. If you want, you can load the live CD and post the output of
from a terminal. This will show if everything is properly detected. Also
will show anything connected to a usb port. If you have anymore questions, just ask away. We hope to see you around!
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke