suggestion: single net-boot floppy

[phil@bolthole.com]

I read the boot-floppy thread a few days ago, but didn't see this kind of
suggestion. So I'd like to propose the following boot+install mechanism

A *single* floppy image, with an absurdly cut down version of the kernel, that
would support not much more than IP, basic e2fs, and networking.

"direct" net connectivity is getting more and more common these days. So I
think we could help a lot of people get debian initially installed at a
site, if there was a single "download this floppy and boot off the net"
mechanism.

You boot off the floppy, it makes a ramdisk, and downloads the normal
"root" and "drivers" images to there. Then it proceeds to do a "normal"
debian install.

Assuming that not all the ethernet drivers would fit on a single floppy
with the kernel, lets say you have to choose from four possible floppy
images to download.

I'm envisioning a web page, with a name something like

  http://www.debian.org/quickstart

The page would have little more than the following:

  Choose your ethernet card from the following list
  [blah blah blah]
    [select]

Which would give them a link to the appropriate image, 
(along with DOS floppy image install tools) which they then download
and reboot.

We could make this really really simple for folks.

Trouble is, I'm no kernel tweaking guru, so I'm asking for someone else to
volunteer to do the work. But I DO offer to help you test it.