I'm about to buy a sub-notebook. It's actually the same one that LindowsOS advertises, only without any OS. There is no floppy or CD drive in this thing. Only USB ports, Firewire ports, hard drive, ethernet, and a media (CF and such) card reader.

I'm trying to wrap my mind around how I'm going to install Linux on this thing without purchasing an external drive. Anyone have any ideas? I've searched around google, but I can't find anything useful. Thanks in advance!

--Akshun J

You can probably boot to compact flash... no kidding, look around for the knoppix pen-drive distro... etc, after that as long as your favorite distro does a net install, or NFS if you have another machine handy, you can copy the netinstall script onto the cfdrive and then run it from there...

Also, you can probably boot to either the firewire drive or a usb drive if you want to install on another machine onto one of those then just boot from it on the laptop, copy it to the laptops system drive, and then edit up lilo/grub to deal with where it has moved to.

Then of course there is just borrowing or buying, etc. a USB cdrom, as long as the BIOS supports booting from one of these preipherals it shouldn't be a problem.

Cheers,

Finegan

I have a sub-notebook (toshiba libretto L2) and it is possible to boot from a cd (pcmcia)
or a usb floppy drive. Try a google with `the_name_of_subnotebook install linux (debian )'

you can get a external floopy drive and boot from it the install from network or a external cdrom drive floppy drives are cheap and sooner or later you will need a externaal media. in my opinin on get a floppy or cdrom drive.

Does anyone have any ideas of how to install Linux on a subnotebook with one pcmcia slot, no cdrom, a pcmcia bootable floppy drive?

You may find a survey of different installation methods dedicated to laptops and notebooks in the according chapter of the Linux-Mobile-Guide http://tuxmobil.org/howtos.html

Werner

Thanks for all of the tips. I'm going to e-mail the manufacturer and find out if the system can boot from the CF reader. Otherwise, I'm going with the external floppy. Thanks again!

--Akshun J

If you have another machine with an ethernet card and a bit of disk space, I would suggest a PXE boot. Have a peek at:

http://www.solarblue.net/docs/x31.htm

..for a quick howto. I have an X series thinkpad and this is how i install BSD/Linux onto it.