linux on an old laptop
 

hey guys/gals

found an old dusty laptop lying around, figured i'd turn it into a linux box

i dont know how much any specs on it 'cept its damn old... and all it has is a floppy drive for installation media (theres a modem but i'm opting against that for the moment)

my question to you is this:

how would i get a linux installation up and running (booting from the harddrive) on this very old laptop...

any suggestions would help, even a link to some guy/gal who said he did it... or a distro i haven't heard of (but i think i've heard of them all)

thanks

Heard of them all... lol, there must be hundreds :p
Anynway, go to www.linux.org and look at the section for Minimalist distributions.. this should have a pile of several floppy linux instals :) Nice and petite. Some with x, many without.

i don't think there's hundreds, but certainly alot

most of them though are firewall/router, rescue, or want a cd, which i don't have

I think you can still install Slack from floppies too :)

i had totally forgotten about slack...

figured all major distros were either cd or net based installations

thanks man

http://tiny.seul.org/en/

Best place to start.

i use deli linux (dirrivitive of slack 7) on my 486 toshiba, it's not bad if you stick a new kernel on there, depending on how old that lappy really is it cant below 386 with 4mb mem or so so you should really strive to figure out what exactly it's got in it.