Re: debian on floppy disks
on Mon, Aug 09, 2004 at 05:56:34PM +0930, charlie (charlie@pcdj.com.au) wrote:
> Hello my name is Charlie and i recently bought a DIGITAL Brand laptop
> from ebay. it has Windows 98 on it. It doesnt possess a cd rom drive and
> i was interested if i could purchase/download a version of your linux on
> Floppy disks. thank you for your time.
Your best bet is likely a chroot install from a floppy distro. Tom's
Root Boot (aka tomsrtbt) is a floppy-based Linux distribution I've used
for this many times in the past.
You can _probably_ get debootstrap to work, with some effort, though
I've not done this myself starting from tomsrtbt.
My preferred method involves doing a base installation with the
base2_2.tgz image file, though this is no longer (host site is down)
last I checked a couple of weeks ago.
For general instructions, see:
http://twiki.iwethey.org/Main/DebianChrootInstall
...describing a Debian chroot install. There is a modified set of
instructions in the standard Debian installation manual.
In your case, you'll want your laptop, a floppy, and some means of
networking to another system. Tomsrtbt doesn't support PCMCIA (IIRC),
but you _can_ get some standard NICs, as well as SLIP and PLIP (good for
about 40 Kbps) running. Slow, but serviceable point-to-point
connections over null serial or parallel cables.
Alternatively, many laptops will accept an external CD drive. You might
look into buying or borrowing one for your system.
Peace.
--
Karsten M. Self <karsten@linuxmafia.com> http://linuxmafia.com/~karsten
Ceterum censeo, Caldera delenda est.
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