A good GUI/X-Windows distro for a floppy drive lappy
 

Specs:
5x86 @100MHz
24Mb Ram
400Mb HDD
.5 or 1Mb graphics
Floppy
No CD Rom

I do have an ethernet pc card for it though and a desktop with an ethernet port, so can I install D.S.L. that way some how?

I'm not sure about network, but damn small linux should be fine

But the laptop does not have a cd drive.

With the ethernet card you should be able to get hold of a boot floppy with PCMCIA support and then kick start a net install of any distro.

Found this link below which might be useful

http://howtos.linux.com/howtos/Laptop-HOWTO.shtml

how big is D.S.L (cd image)

50Mb ish

you might be able to find a way to split it to like 40 floppies

Well I can plug my laptop hard drive into my desktop and copy files from a cd to it. I dont think I could just install an operating system like that could I (because the hardware would be different when I put it back into the laptop, right?).

...It might work... Yes, it might.

Or you could perhaps "create" a virtual laptop similar to yours, with access to your PC's CDROM and (plugged-in) laptop drive, using a virtual PC software, such as Bochs...

Yves.

Amazing, I was JUST about to ask the SAME question.

I have a Dell Latitude XPi M166ST.

Pentium MMX 166mhz
NO CD-ROM
Floppy
Linksys WPC11v4 802.11b Network Adapter

I need a boot floppy that supports the WPC11v4 and can do a network install.

Haha, I hope its possible!

No CDROM for Installing
 

I have had the same problem, more than once.

I've solved them by hitting up my friends and surplus parts houses until I have both a 100 MB Zip drive and a CDROM which connect through the parallel port. Total investment in both is $15 (US).

DamnSmall Linux works fine. So does the 24 floppy Debian net install, if you have hardware to access a network of any speed with a CDROM connected to it. Using the Debian floppy set, it sees the parallel port Zip drive as if it were a cdrom. I'm sure there are other distros, as well, though I admit I haven't kept up with it.

I have one 486 lappie that I have DamnSmall installed on. Full gui (IceWM) plenty of apps and space for some files with only a 500 MB hard drive! You can do this, if you're just willing to tinker with stuff. I did, and no one is going to call me a Linux ace who knows me. That's my favorite machine for text entry, by the way, and I use it a lot.

Good luck;
Jack

I actually found a solution.

Redhat 9 :)

You need only boot disks and some time!

diskboot.img - Gets it going
drvnet.img - Network Drivers (I modified and added my own driver in for the WPC11v4)
pcmciaadd.img - PCMCIA

I did the above and completed a successfull FTP install! :)

got the same deal, laptop with no cd drive and no net card.

Toshiba Satellite 100CS
Pentium 75 MHz
24MB RAM
528MB HD