I have an OLD laptop - Pentium 100 with just over 800 mb HDD (don't know how much RAM but it used to run Win 95 soso). To make a long story short, Windows can't find somefile and won't load, but rather than troubleshoot that problem I would like to fiddle with a Linix distro.

The biggest problem is I'm limited to floppies only.

Is there a distro out there with a GUI that will install from a relatively small number of floppies?

Thiis laptop won't be connected to the internet, and I won't be using it for anything really; this is more or less a hands on learning experience just to see if I can get it to work again.

Any suggestions as to which (if any) distros I should be looking at?

my first thought would be damn small linux, but i don't know if that installs from floppies. you could start looking through distrowatch, you'd probably find one that would work.

http://distrowatch.com/


>> check this out:
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/install_from_floppy.html

I think Damn Small Linux can be installed from floppies.

I'm making the floppies for BasicLinux - it fits on 2 floppies... We'll see how it goes.

i don't think that provides much of a GUI. you'd be better off with DSL.

hmmm I found a howto for installing it, but it seems there has been some "physical damage" to the C:\ drive on the laptop - so who knows... It might be target practice after all. BasicLinux is supposed to install to the ram, but when I boot with the 1st floppy it says

LIL-

and doesn't do anything. Any ideas or should I create a new topic?

Thanks for the help guys!