I want to boot linux from a floppy disk or similar media. Kind of like when my old computer didn't have a HDD and I would just insert an OS disk on boot up, and then I would go from there.

I have a seen a firewall floppy project, but I wondered if there are any versions of linux that fit on a floppy. I have installed mandrake and red-hat, but now I'm ready for the ultimate in simplicity.

If there isn't a floppy version, maybe one for a usb drive(small: around 16MB), or a cd-rom. I basically don't want to format a partition or entire HDD.

Maybe its too much to ask, but is internet browsing available on a scaled-down version like that, even text browsing would be nifty.

Thanks

Don't know about web browsing on a floppy, but there are lots of floppy based linux distros. Search www.google.com/linux .

Can you boot from a CD?
http://www.distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=cd

Try a live CD distro like Knoppix.

SUSE makes the live-eval version of SUSE LINUX available for download as an ISO image. This version runs entirely from the bootable CD and is not installed on the hard disk.

If you want to get to know SUSE LINUX or test if your hardware is fully supported, the live-eval version is the right choice for you.

The ISO image is located in the respective directory under ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/

I think I have a copy of Gentoo on CD also...

http://sourceforge.net/projects/rescuecd/

The iso there is a fairly complete non-graphical rescue cd, but you can also download the source, tweak it up however you like, and burn a version with your customizations.

i've tried 2 disk linux, fit on 2 floppies.
go to http://www.linux.org/dist/index.html you can find many minimalists linux distro there.