Hi All,

I recently bought a 17-year old (!?) laptop for peanuts. It works perfectly but only has a floppy disk drive to get software onto it (CD/DVD readers and USB sticks hadn't been invented then I suppose ). I've been looking out for some kind of mini- or microlinux to install via floppy. I've got somewhere with muLinux ( http://www.micheleandreoli.it/mulinux/ ) but development was stopped on this five or so years AGO and the trail's gone pretty cold.

Does anyone have any ADVICE about how to run a basic Linux system on such an old machine which only has a floppy drive and a 200M HD for storage?
Here is a list. Go down the page abit.
Small and live CD Linux based distributions
http://bengross.com/smallunix.html

OR
Puppy Linux
small, fast and free OS
Just go to http://puppylinux.org/

Rather than use the floppy, remove the hard and a n slave it into a Desktop PC and load the puppy onto it. Then put the drive back into the other older PC.

Many thanks for the link to the list of small Linuxes. I suppose it was because you mentioned Puppy Linux separately that I looked there first.
This is certainly an interestingly small Linux with an active following. You can't SAY that, I think, for muLinux, which I had also downloaded and had running (sort of) on the old laptop.

I downloaded the Puppy ISO this afternoon and have run the system on my Desktop PC. I already have more questions but of course it would be better to put those on the Puppy forum.

With regard to INSTALLING a miniLinux on my old laptop - I appreciate your suggestion to remove the internal hard disk and plumb it temporarily into my desktop PC - but that's not the sort of thing I would dare to do without detailed expert advice (preferably from someone looking over my shoulder )

Thanks anyway but it seems I'll have to try and prune Puppy down enough to get it over to the laptop on one or two floppys.

I don't have to have a GUI - I'd perhaps be happier with a command line interface for studying Linux. (More questions for the Puppy forum!)

Thanks once again for this kick-start in the right direction... .

*censored* Summerfield (aka SysMan)
(Censored??? - it's my name!!!)Linux on Floppies

Seems you may have a few other alternatives...Forgot to mention serial port transfers.
If it has a serial port., you make null modem cable and transfer over the cable.Quote from: Geek-9pm on January 23, 2010, 04:23:43 PM

Forgot to mention serial port transfers.
If it has a serial port., you make null modem cable and transfer over the cable.