hi ter
i am using debian etch linux and waas quite asstonished to see that unlike windows my system never hange and never gave me trouble..my friend happened to see my system which has beryl and many other stylish softwares installed and now he too wants to try linux..we both have a lan card in our systems and we being neighbours have actually set up a small network, with only two computers..the problem is that i dont have the debian cd with me and downloading it would be funny cause my connection speed is 128kbps..someone told me tat linux can be installed from a network if yess then how can i do it without any boot cd or anything..how can i install linux in my friends system from my computerr..could any body help me with this please...

sorry i would like to know one more thing..i had read some were tat u can boot from another pc in a network..if yes wont my friend be able to do tat using the lan connection between our systems..by using my /boot files..he is using windows xp and i would like to know how he can boot from my system but not use any of of my personal files..kindly give me a solution for this too.
regards

If you take your friend's hard drive and put it in your machine, you can just clone your drive. You can use dd if you know how. Partimage is faster, but you need space to store the image.

This assumes that your friends hardware is compatible with your current settings. You will have to modify your friends xorg.conf file to work with his video adapter.

cant i do it through the network??

Only if you can boot Linux on both machines somehow. I would normally recommend System Rescue CD, but with your internet connection it would take a very long time to download.

I re-read your second post and realized you want your friend to boot from your machine. It looks like you need some basic form of Linux already installed on the client to use BOOTP.

What you really want is gPXE, which does not look trivial to setup.

I still think my original suggestion is easiest.