on Sun, Jun 16, 2002, debian.org@lkv.mailshell.com (debian.org@lkv.mailshell.com) wrote:
> I have an IBM Thinkpad 560 with no external floppy drive or (any)
> CD-ROM. It's running Win '95 with no other partitions and the only
> way to get data in or out of the laptop is with an Ethernet PC Card.
Ouch.
Getting access to a floppy will help you to no end. These should be
available used.
Otherwise, I'd probably approach this by:
- Getting a partition manager on the system.
- Repartitioning Win95 down to a portion of the disk (you don't say
how big it is).
- Installing GNU/Linux onto the other portion of the disk using
LOADLIN and a base image.
I've written a Debian chroot install guide which may be of some use to
you:
http://kmself.home.netcom.com/GNU/Linux/FAQs/DebianChrootInstall.html
> That's why I'd like to execute a diskless installation. The
> installation guide seems to treat this type of installation as an
> afterthought, but I'm also having trouble finding a more thorough
> guide to a diskless installation.
>
> I'm also looking to convert this laptop into a basic Internet surfing
> machine. What *lightweight* browsers can I use? I also define weight
> to be total weight, including any desktop GUIs that I'll need to
> install. I've heard of Galeon and Skipstone, and I think at least of
> of them needs GNOME (I was also originally thinking about using
> XFree86).
Galeon is quite the nice browser, Skipstone unfortunately has more
potential than fulfillment. However for your system, I'd suggest:
- BrowseX. Probably the most full-featured browser for the hardware
you're contemplating. It's based on Tk/Tcl, but supports SSL and
Javascript, making it useful across a wide range of sites.
- Barring that, one of the old Netscape browsers, possibly back in
the 3.x series. Note that these have security issues with
Java/Javascript.
- Opera may be suitable. It's non-free, but is reported to run well
on light hardware.
Other options include text-mode browsers (w3m rocks) and dillo, but both
offer functionality compromises. I don't know of other browsers that
would run well and offer a full feature set.
More reviews:
http://kmself.home.netcom.com/GNU/Linux/FAQs/browsers.html
Peace.
--
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
What Part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
NPR: Radio for between the ears: http://www.npr.org/
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