Hi there

my NSLU2 has just died and I want to replace it with something more powerful. I was thinking this:
http://www.tranquilpc-shop.co.uk/acatalog/T7_PC.html

However, as far as I can tell it doesn't support a CDROM drive I'll buy it with no operating system.

So how would I get Debian installed?!

Other PCs I have available to make disks or USB things are a Windows box with SATA interface and a (very) old IDE interface PC running Debian.

Help!

If you have got USB stick you can put iso of the os and boot your system from the usb stick as you would from cd. You can use unetbootin for the purpose.

Laptops without CD/DVD drives are becoming popular. I have found it helpful to get me an external DVD-drive that can be connected via USB. Commercial applications or games ussually come with a CD/DVD anyway (mainly on Windows), and it is also neat to write out backups to a DVD-RW disk.

Linux Archive

thanks. I think the USB CD/DVD is the way to go. Looks like they can be picked up pretty cheap

You could also check out NetbootCD-3.0 (6.1MB)( http://netbootcd.tuxfamily.org/ )

I just made one for USB ( http://multidistro.com/downloads/off...icialusbs.html )
that has tinycore-1.3/1.3rc3(kexec-support), some rescue/desktop apps installed(tce), great wallpapers too.
NetbootCD-3.0 is based off a remaster of Tinycore-1.3rc3; so I included TC-1.3 as well.
It can netinstall various versions of any of these;
* Ubuntu
* Debian GNU/Linux (standard and daily installers)
* Fedora
* openSUSE
* Mandriva Linux
* CentOS
* Slackware
o (note: for Slackware, you may need an alternative installation source, such as NFS or the hard drive)

NetbootCD also supports downloading and launching the latest version of the GRUB4DOS bootloader.

Also, make sure your computer will work with the usb-cd/dvd; some computers won't boot the cd/dvd-it'll just spin.