Re: Debian on an older laptop
On Monday 18 October 1999, at 16 h 31, the keyboard of "Matthew Guenther"
<mguenthe@netcom.ca> wrote:
> sure if it's possible to install on his computer (Zenith Z-Note L425). The
> biggest problem is that he is without a CD drive, and only has a very slow
> modem (9600 bps).
Use the serial port. Even on a very old PC, it can goes at 38400 bps.
> Is it possible to install most of a working system off of
> floppies?
Only the base system. After that, you have pppd and apt, so you can use the
serial port to do the rest.
> Would it be possible to easily transfer files between my computer
> and his using a serial cable?
Yes, that's what I often do with old laptops.
To summary:
- install the base system with floppies,
- plug in a zero-modem cable to a friendly computer,
- run "pppd debug [options] 38400 /dev/ttyS0" on both machines (the options
depend on your setup: where are the Debian packages, do you have spare IP
addresses on your network, etc)
- configure /etc/apt/sources.list and run 'apt-get update'. Then 'apt-get
install the-package-you-want'.
> Would Debian even be the best choice for this
> machine?
I think so, because you can easily tune what you install, unlike "dummy-oriented" distributions.
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