Does anyone know what is the best 1 floppy (no install) linux distribution???

Thanks!

I think you're gonna get a very heavily biased response to this: tomsrtbt! That is, of course, unless you have specific interests... such as setting up a gateway/router/firewall/etc. If you check out Ibiblio's list there are many 1-floppy distros that are aimed at specific tasks.

Oh, and once again: tomsrtbt

What is it that you want the one floppy Linux to do?

Tomsrtbt *is* the standard answer, but I like muLinux, which boots on one floppy, but you can then add various other floppies to add capabity.

The best one I've found is leka rescue floppy www.leka.net
It has support for dos,vfat,ntfs,msdos, and linux filesystems.
It has a text web-browser, a mini irc client, and support for a few different types of network cards. And lots of other apps.

Checkout the site, nice little floppy distro.

I'm working on a modification to it so that i can use it on my laptop; Upgrading the kernel and adding support for my PCMCIA cards. But I'm going to have to use a disk disk setup, one for the 2.4.18 kernel and the other for the rootfs. Almost had it done today but ran into a little prob with the PCMCIA drivers. Going to build them into the kernel and see how that works.

Per your suggestion, I downloaded leka. What I like about it is that it is very straight forward in its design. Unlike muLinux, which uses lots of clever tricks to do what it does. I guess all the binaries are staticly linked? (I don't see any shared libraries in /lib) I especially liked the little add on binaries that are built for it.

The thing I didn't like is the limited hardware support. It would be nice if there were a bunch of modules compiled for it as well as a few different kernels.

I am currently using the "links" text based browser for the first time. I find it amazing that I can navigate around in this text box with it, but I can. The frames support in it helps keep me from getting lost like I do with "lynx". Do I dare attempt a spell check in this thing?

If you want, monday when I get a hold of the laptop that i recompiled the 2.4.18 kernel on I could give you instructions on how to do a 2 disk version of the leka floppy.

I have a working version with all the 3com, and standard cards, and PCMCIA support built in. File system support for ext3, dos, vfat etc. And frame buffer support, all built in. The 2.4.18 kernels are to big to put on the same disk as the rootfs, so thats why it would have to be a 2 disk setup.

Give me your hardware setup and I could do a custom kernel for you with your hardware supported. All the programs will still work as they do with the original setup, but you wouldnt have to use the netconfig to load a module for your nic, or load modules for the different file systems cause they will be built in.

The only difference between the original Leka disk and mine, are the 2.4.18 kernel with hardware/filesystem support built in, and a 2 disk setup.

Thank you very much for the offer, but that is one thing I liked about leka: It looks straight forward enough that I could probably custom compile my own kernel. I normally compile my own kernels for my full sized Linux distro's anyway. If you find that there is any tricks and/or surprises to compiling one for leka, please let me know.

In contrast with muLinux, I recently discovered that because it uses an ancient kernel (2.0.36), I have to use an ancient compiler to compile it. This is still something I could handle, but certainly is a pain. I wanted to recompile the kernel on muLinux because 2.0.36 won't read "sparse" mode ext2 file systems, which seem to be common these days, 2.0.39 does. Of course I could use a modern kernel, but then I would end up adding a floppy to the boot sequence like you have done with leka + 2.4.x.