Hello, currently I'm working with a compaq t1010 thin client, and I'm trying to find a way to fudge linux on to it. Right now it's got Windows NTE on it, it has 128 MB of RAM, and 96MB combined on board chipspace and compact flash "C:". So, I was wondering if there is something similar to loadlin for Windows NT. If so I could get a kernal with USB support on there, load it up, and run zipslack from a thumbdrive I have. If anyone knows of software like I'm looking for I'd appreciate the assistance, and if anyone has any other suggestions or idea's let me know. Thanks.

If the compaq uses the "ntldr" program to boot (what normal XP and Nt uses), you might try using it to load in a small file image of the lilo or grub boot loader. Just google for "NT Lilo Boot" or "NT Grub Boot" for several web pages detailing how to do it.

That sounds like a good idea, but the problem lies in the fact that I don't think I can repartition the NTFS partition. If there is a way I could get it to run "on" the ntfs and get a usb driver loaded I could finish loading a system from thumbdrive, but the problem is, I don't think lilo will load something on the NTFS partition. I maybe wrong, but I'd need some help in that area too.

It should work. You might want to search this site for "thumbdrive" for examples. To get ntldr to load in linux, first you need to select a partition for lilo rather than the mbr. Then using the "dd" command, the first 240 bytes of the partition are copied to a file. This is the file that the ntldr loads in to transfer control to lilo.

You may be able to put lilo on the MBR and use lilo to load in either linux or NTE. I've never had problems with this when installing linux on my XP laptop. Sometimes I had a problem with the desktop however.

Please check whether lilo or grub can load in the kernel and initrd file from a thumb drive. It may depend on the version os lilo or grub that you use. The usb modules are either in the kernel or initrd file, and lilo/grub needs to read them from the thumbdrive.

Another possibility is that the computer's bios supports usb booting, and you can simply enable it in bios and change the boot order.

It may make sense, since this is a thin-client appliance, to use this computer as a X terminal and have the programs running on a Linux server. (Assuming you have one on the network.) I believe that there is a thin client how-to on the www.tldp.org website.