I would like to install a lightweight linux distribution (no matter which) from within windows xp (as i do not have a cd burner or usb pendrive), but I do not succeed.

Here is what I have tried so far:

a) Run dsl-embedded and start dsl-hdinstall. It could not access the destination partition hda3, as it was running in a virtual environment this way.

b) Write a dsl boot floppy from within windows and boot dsl linux with that. Rawrite[23].exe could not write the image to the floppy... (Faulty floppy drive?)

c) Run debian.exe in windows. It could not access any files on the web repository via my squid proxy on the firewall machine. Well, as a matter of fact, it did not even try to access any files via the proxy (no traces of that in access.log), though it was aware of the proxy (no direct access to internet here). Even IE uses that proxy without problems, but debian.exe is not able to. I saw the same bug report on the debian list, but the issue was closed without actually fixing the bug of debian.exe, as the user found a workaround without proxy.

Is there a way to install any lightweight linux from within windows, behind a squid proxy?

If you want to replace Windows with Linux, you could try this:

http://goodbye-microsoft.com/

Make sure you don't have any files on the computer that you might need later.

I've never tried it, so use at your own risk.

You can try wubi.

That is the place where I downloaded debian.exe from. Then it could not access the web via my squid proxy. (IE could).

I will try wubi, instead. Supposed that it does not have higher hardware requirements than a PII Celeron 1G with 128Megs of RAM, and 3.5GBytes hdd space.

Though, I was a bit curious to finally try Debian, the last "big old" distro that I have not tried, yet.

Edit:
No luck with wubi, either, as it is not lightweight at all: it requires 256M RAM and over 10G of hdd space is recommended.

You could do it virtually with VirtualBox.

Never mind, debian.exe failed, but the good old Microsoft Internet Explorer respected my proxy, and helped me:
1. I downloaded the debian net installer kernel (linux), initrd.gz, and the grldr file (Grub for DOS) with it, and copied them to the right places,
2. created a menu.lst file for grub with only three lines,
3. appended a line to boot.ini to call grldr (grub)
4. rebooted,

and I was soon in the debian installer, that did the netinstall then!

I am already writing this post from Iceweasel in Debian

Edit:
Doh, I happened to install debian with gnome, and I hate it. This system is inconvenient, and slow as hell. It is much slower than Windows XP on this hardware.

Would KDE work with only 128Megs of RAM? I doubt

If not, I will simply remove gnome, and use xfce, instead. That is equally inconvenient, but it is at least lightweight and fast on this weak hardware.

try ubuntu

KDE would probably be slower. 128mb of Ram is bare minimum for most of the GUI's Try Xfce, or Fluxbox. Fluxbox would probably scream on 128mb of Ram, but it requires a lot of tweaking to get just how you want it, and its not nearly as intuitive as Gnome/KDE/Xfce. Fluxbox is the GUI that DSL uses...

IGF

With only 128mb of Ram? If Debian is slow, Ubuntu would crawl.

Hi:
I am very bad situation to install the RHEL3 or 4 or 5 or 9 on my laptop.
I don't find the CDs.
Please provide me the information to my email account musakhan53@hotmail.com
You help will be highly appreciated.
Thanks

Download Ubuntu and mount the iso image with daemon tools, the autorun allows you to install and uninstall from within windows

Musakhan53!
If you wanted to do it like me, then you have to know where the kernel and initrd image for the net installer of your distro are, and download them. Plus, you have to know what the right boot parameters for your kernel are! (I knew those, because debian.exe displayed them).

If you knew these, then you can find the description of basically the same procedure here: http://wiki.ubuntu.org.cn/index.php?...&variant=zh-cn

The procedure is universal; any distro can be installed from within windows, for which netinstall kernel and initrd exist.

You could always run slackware. It is one of the best distributions and if configured correctly it leaves a small footprint.

Fluxbox on Debian absolutely flies on old hardware if you configure it right. It's down to what you install on the base system. I always install Debian base system only, then use aptitude to pull in only the packages and dependancies required after that.

KDE and Gnome run roughly the same IMHO on any equipment, there's not a great deal in it. Yeah yeah, I could start a fanboy flame war but that's not my intention, I use both environments and that's just what I've found. I can't compare Gnome to KDE4 though, apparently that has a smaller footprint!?!?