Linux Distros

[dean_shan]

I am looking for a version of Linux that all of the installation can be off of floppies. I have an old laptop (1GB storage, 31MB storage) that I would like to but some flavor of Linux on it. Right now I have Mini-Windows 3.11 (http://newdos.yginfo.net/msdos71/index.htm) but would like Linux instead. I have searched for one but keep getting distros that boot right off a floppy.

[Falstaff]

Not sure of any floppy instalable Linux distros, but you might want to check out this thread (http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/06/1910231&mode=thread&tid=106&tid=137&tid=185&tid=198) at Slashdot for ideas.
ryewell asks: "I have an IBM Thinkpad 390 Laptop, PII 266Mhz, 128 MB RAM, with USB 1.0 port and a 3.5 floppy drive being the most important stats I would assume for this question. So my hard drive died, and I've been using a DOS boot disk and a program called Mel to do my word processing.Would it be possible to boot the laptop in Linux using a 3.5 disk, then using drivers access the USB memory stick that had an adequate Linux system on it?" With USB thumb drives getting to be as large as 512 megs, memory sticks weighing in at 1 gig, and Compact Flash cards getting into the 2 gig range, this might not be such a bad idea. There's the Linux Mobile System that looks to implement something like this, but are there other distributions or similar projects that might be of interest? If you were going to put together a custom system for something like this, how would you do it? "If Linux can be configured this way, I would need no hard drive, and the created docs/info could be saved on the USB drive memory stick. This way, no hard drive means no moving parts, which means better battery life, and I won't have to buy a hard drive which at the best deal I can find is about $130 US after taxes, shipping, etc. And how cool would it be to run a laptop off of a memory stick! Unfortunately, I know nothing about Linux, but this might be a cool problem to solve for those smart and knowledgeable enough to figure it out. Thanks for any help you can provide!"

There were some interesting suggestions there (I suggest browsing at at least +1. I saw one person mention a network installation of Mandrake 9.2, so if your laptop has network capabilities, you could attempt that. Hope that helps. I recently installed Mandrake 10, but don't use it because I have not found any way to run Steam on it (the multiplayer software for HL mods).

[dean_shan]

No that won't work. I want to install linux to the HD (1GB). I have no network access (no PCMCIA :() I only have a floppy and a HD.

[OSUKid7]

Do you have a CD drive? How about installing bootable linux on the HD? Not sure exactly how that is done, but I remeber seeing an option to install to HDD when running knoppix or damn small linux.

edit: did a quick (search on) google and found this (http://www.linewbie.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3). Not sure if those will help or not.

edit 2: also found this (http://libranet.com/guide/). Good luck!

[dean_shan]

Like I said before NO CD-ROM. Just floppy and HD. If I had a CD I wouldn't have a problem at all. You can find Linux ISOs all over the place.

[dean_shan]

edit: did a quick (search on) google and found this (http://www.linewbie.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3). Not sure if those will help or not.
edit 2: also found this (http://libranet.com/guide/). Good luck!

Nope those won't work. Those are Live Floppies. And Libranet's floppies are only if you can't boot off CDs. How did people install Linux in the old days? There has to be a floppy install of linux somewhere.

[Janak Parekh]

You realize any modern distro is going to have a bazillion floppies, right?

Is the hard drive removable?

--janak

[Zack Mahdavi]

I think if you wanted to install a modern version of Linux, you're going to have to move the drive over to a computer with a CD-ROM or network access. Then, install Linux on that drive and then move the drive back into your old computer.

I've done this in the past for aging 486 machines without CD-ROM drives. It worked fine, although the latest GUIs run painfully slow on the computers. I'd recommend using FVVM as a GUI or just sticking to Level 3 command line.

[dean_shan]

Yeah it's removable, I need to find my adapter to hook it to desktop mobo. I'm thinking I'm going to do that as I can't find a distro.

Oh and I know it will take a ton of floppies. I don't need to run Red Hat on it. I'm thinking like a 1995 version of linux with a gui.

[Kati Compton]

Yeah it's removable, I need to find my adapter to hook it to desktop mobo. I'm thinking I'm going to do that as I can't find a distro.

Oh and I know it will take a ton of floppies. I don't need to run Red Hat on it. I'm thinking like a 1995 version of linux with a gui.

Or you could get one of those business-card sized bootable Linux distros from EFF...

[dean_shan]

Or you could get one of those business-card sized bootable Linux distros from EFF...

I've download that before. It's no help in this case as I do not have a CD drive on the laptop.

[mscdex]

How about hooking up an external drive via usb?

Also, if the laptop indeed does have a usb port, and you have a 64mb/128mb usb drive, you can boot linux right off the usb drive (provided in this case that you have a linux boot floppy that can boot to the usb drive, usually /dev/sda1)

That's how I have my usb 128mb watch. I have a small bootable version of linux that runs right off the usb memory, no need for anything else. From there I can install the system itself to a hard drive if I want, via a menu. (I current use a modified version of DSL) PM me if you want the URL to a couple of these usb drive distros.

[Pony99CA]

How did people install Linux in the old days? There has to be a floppy install of linux somewhere.
Old days? Linux is only about 13 years old. Didn't most people have CD drives when it started becoming popular?

Steve

[mscdex]

How did people install Linux in the old days? There has to be a floppy install of linux somewhere.
Old days? Linux is only about 13 years old. Didn't most people have CD drives when it started becoming popular?

Steve

Not really. Besides, cd burners weren't available so it wasn't like you could just readily burn a copy of linux and install, like you can nowadays anyway.

[Pony99CA]

How did people install Linux in the old days? There has to be a floppy install of linux somewhere.
Old days? Linux is only about 13 years old. Didn't most people have CD drives when it started becoming popular?
Not really. Besides, cd burners weren't available so it wasn't like you could just readily burn a copy of linux and install, like you can nowadays anyway.
That's true, I forgot that CD burners didn't come out for a while after CD drives became popular. When did burners start coming out? I think it was the mid- to late-90s, but when exactly?

Before that, I assume they just uploaded stuff to an FTP site. Most people who wanted Linux probably had a fast connection. :-)

Steve

[dean_shan]

How about hooking up an external drive via usb?
No this computer doesn't have USB. This is a now frills system. It has a floppy, a HD, ram, mobo, screen, trackpad. That's it. No network, no PCMCIA, no CD, no USB.

[Steven Cedrone]

No network, no PCMCIA, no CD, no USB.

And no Linux... :wink:

Steve

[Sven Johannsen]

Nothing useful to contribute, but enjoy you young guys who have never known a world without PCs ;). I remember getting my first PC/DOS compatible machine. It was a Compaq portable (if you had a truck). Two full height 5.25 floppy drives...that was it. I remember sandwiching in a 5M (yes M) hard drive, full height, at the expense of one floppy. My Hayes internal, full size card, 2400B modem...a screamer for the day..was $500.
This was late 80's guys, and brand new stuff, not last year's models. This was like 16 years ago. Look where we are now. We are now burning our own DVDs which didn't even exist 15 years ago.
After noting the basic system that poor dean-shan is working with, I had to smile when he nixed the CD suggestion and then someone suggested, well just throw a USB thumb drive on there. USB came well after CDs guys. I have more storage on a key-chain today, than most PCs had 5 years ago.
It's freakin amazing.

[dean_shan]

5.25 floppy drives

Ah yes, memories of Kindergarden. I remember I thought they were old even then. By first grade they were out.

[Janak Parekh]

Before that, I assume they just uploaded stuff to an FTP site. Most people who wanted Linux probably had a fast connection. :-)
Only for those at universities and the like. Most others bought copies for the pressed CDs. I know -- I have a copy of RedHat 4.2 on my shelf. ;)

--janak

[Janak Parekh]

Nothing useful to contribute, but enjoy you young guys who have never known a world without PCs ;).
Hey! Not all of us have only used PCs, you know.

I remember getting my first PC/DOS compatible machine. It was a Compaq portable (if you had a truck).
My dear sir, that was late in my PC evolution. My first PC was an Eagle clone (if anyone's heard of them, I'll be shocked 8O) -- I think it only had one 5.25" floppy, and no hard drive. We also set up a couple of original IBM 5150s... still had great keyboards.

I remember sandwiching in a 5M (yes M) hard drive, full height, at the expense of one floppy.
Ha! We had to get an external one the size of a shoebox... maybe a bit larger. I think it's still sitting in the attic somewhere.

My Hayes internal, full size card, 2400B modem...a screamer for the day..was $500.
A whopping 2400bps!? How about 300 or 1200bps? ;) 2400bps was such a luxury... and, oh, we had only external.

It's freakin amazing.
Agreed. :)

--janak

[Kati Compton]

Or you could get one of those business-card sized bootable Linux distros from EFF...

I've download that before. It's no help in this case as I do not have a CD drive on the laptop.
Right - but you were talking about hooking up the harddrive elsewhere, and wanted a small-footprint install. I meant that those distros might be small enough that they won't feel sluggish.

[Kati Compton]

5.25 floppy drives

Ah yes, memories of Kindergarden. I remember I thought they were old even then. By first grade they were out.
Hmm. You must be younger than me. My 486DX2/66 that I got in high school had a 5.25" drive. And before that I used them with my C64. Between the C64 and the 486 I used my parents' computers - macs (as in, Mac, later Mac Plus), that had 3.5", but didn't have hard drives until later. I also had an Amiga 500 in high school that used 3.5". I had an expansion for it that fit a 20 meg hard drive. I still have it in a bin in the basement.

[dean_shan]

Hmm. You must be younger than me.

You betcha. I'm guessing you are 30 somthing.

[upplepop]

I have a few ideas...

You could try installing via FTP, but I'll go ahead and assume you don't even have a modem installed on that thing either.

I don't know if this is possible, but perhaps you could partition the hard drive into 2 volumes, use a file compressor and splitter to put all the files on floppies and copy them to one of the partitions, and then run the install from the other partition... yeah, crazy idea.

Look into this distro: http://libranet.com/guide It installs on 4 floppies, but I don't know what its functionality is.

As you are aware, the are tons of distros that fit on 1 floppy. But there are some that are a litlle bit larger, although I don't know if they can install via floppy. Go here: http://www.linux.org/dist/ and search for distro in the Minimalist category.

[mscdex]

How did people install Linux in the old days? There has to be a floppy install of linux somewhere.
Old days? Linux is only about 13 years old. Didn't most people have CD drives when it started becoming popular?
Not really. Besides, cd burners weren't available so it wasn't like you could just readily burn a copy of linux and install, like you can nowadays anyway.
That's true, I forgot that CD burners didn't come out for a while after CD drives became popular. When did burners start coming out? I think it was the mid- to late-90s, but when exactly?

Before that, I assume they just uploaded stuff to an FTP site. Most people who wanted Linux probably had a fast connection. :-)

Steve

I believe around late 90's. At least mainstream anyway.

[Kati Compton]

Hmm. You must be younger than me.

You betcha. I'm guessing you are 30 somthing.
Nope - 28.

[Pony99CA]

I remember getting my first PC/DOS compatible machine. It was a Compaq portable (if you had a truck).
My dear sir, that was late in my PC evolution. My first PC was an Eagle clone (if anyone's heard of them, I'll be shocked 8O) -- I think it only had one 5.25" floppy, and no hard drive.
Consider yourself shocked. :-) I remember them. I tried to get my grandmother to get involved with their IPO. The stock had taken off on their first IPO, but the CEO died in a car accident on that same day, so they cancelled the IPO and pushed it back. I figured the stock would still take off, but suggested she sell after the IPO. Unfortunately, the stock wasn't available in Michigan, so it was a moot point. But I do remember them. :-)

Of course, my first PC makes yours look modern. I had an Apple II+ (yes, those are "PCs".) More about that in a bit....

I remember sandwiching in a 5M (yes M) hard drive, full height, at the expense of one floppy.
Ha! We had to get an external one the size of a shoebox... maybe a bit larger. I think it's still sitting in the attic somewhere.
Hard disk? :lol: My Apple II+ had a cassette interface. Getting floppy drives (5.25", 140 KB or so) months later was one of the best upgrades I made on the system.

My Hayes internal, full size card, 2400B modem...a screamer for the day..was $500.
A whopping 2400bps!? How about 300 or 1200bps? ;) 2400bps was such a luxury... and, oh, we had only external.
Yep -- the first peripheral I bought for my Apple (purchased when I got it, in fact) was a Hayes Micromodem II (hardly "micro" -- it was a box probably bigger than a sleeve-compatible iPAQ) running at a whopping 300 baud.

Even back them, I knew how important it was to be online. I figured I could use it to connect to U of M's network and avoid going to the computing center for much of my work, and it worked. I even ran my own BBS in my dorm room for a year. :-D

It's freakin amazing.
Agreed. :)
Absolutely. We're "Generation Techs" -- pocket calculators, PCs, VCRs, CDs, DVDs, cable TV, satellite TV, HDTV, GPS, cell phones. With the possible exceptions of cars opening the country in the early and middle 20th century and air travel opening the world in the middle 20th century, what other generation experienced such changes?

As a kid, we had dial phones, black and white TV and adding machines.

Steve

[Pony99CA]

Hmm. You must be younger than me.
You betcha. I'm guessing you are 30 somthing.
Nope - 28.
Ouch! Damn kids! :rotfl: (If I recall, last year or so, Dean was 17, so he's probably 18 or 19 now. Lucky dog.)

Steve

[dean_shan]

Nope - 28.

I was close, but give me some credit, I don't know my computer history that well :wink:.

[dean_shan]

(If I recall, last year or so, Dean was 17, so he's probably 18 or 19 now. Lucky dog.)

Yeah I'm 18. That's crazy that you remembered that.

[Janak Parekh]

Consider yourself shocked. :-) I remember them. I tried to get my grandmother to get involved with their IPO. The stock had taken off on their first IPO, but the CEO died in a car accident on that same day, so they cancelled the IPO and pushed it back. I figured the stock would still take off, but suggested she sell after the IPO. Unfortunately, the stock wasn't available in Michigan, so it was a moot point. But I do remember them. :-)
Wow. I am very impressed. We have it somewhere at home, along with the shoebox external HD (which, mind you, was a later edition). We also have these scary Sanyo MPC-550s or something that were about "60% compatible" with IBM PCs. Yes, you read that right. About 60% of programs would run...

Of course, my first PC makes yours look modern. I had an Apple II+ (yes, those are "PCs".) More about that in a bit....
Well, I meant IBM PC clones. We have a II+ somewhere at home, too...

Hard disk? :lol: My Apple II+ had a cassette interface. Getting floppy drives (5.25", 140 KB or so) months later was one of the best upgrades I made on the system.
Yeah - we have a VIC-20/C64 cassette drive somewhere, too. Damn, that was slow. Remember the 1541s that needed alignment, too?

Yep -- the first peripheral I bought for my Apple (purchased when I got it, in fact) was a Hayes Micromodem II (hardly "micro" -- it was a box probably bigger than a sleeve-compatible iPAQ) running at a whopping 300 baud.
Yes - the ones in the silver boxes. Those things were indestructible. One thing I never had to use (thank god) was an acoustic coupler -- at least we were using the standard phone jacks. We had customers with acoustic couplers, though.

Even back them, I knew how important it was to be online. I figured I could use it to connect to U of M's network and avoid going to the computing center for much of my work, and it worked. I even ran my own BBS in my dorm room for a year. :-D
:D I was not as l33t back then - we had CompuServe. It was expensive. 8O

As a kid, we had dial phones, black and white TV and adding machines.
At least we had those... :lol:

--janak

[Steven Cedrone]

Ah the memories! I still have an accoustic coupler here somewhere! I remember too, how cool I thought those first Hayes modems were, you could sit your AT&T phone right on top of them. Remember how the "feet" of the phones sat in the grooves on either side of the top of the modem? They looked so cool! :oops: :wink:

Steve

[Kati Compton]

Okay everyone, time to watch Wargames (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/)!

"Do You Want To Play A Game?"

[Janak Parekh]

Ah the memories! I still have an accoustic coupler here somewhere! I remember too, how cool I thought those first Hayes modems were, you could sit your AT&T phone right on top of them. Remember how the "feet" of the phones sat in the grooves on either side of the top of the modem? They looked so cool! :oops: :wink:
Yep - we had a setup just like that at home. And those 8 lights... it's been awhile. ;)

Talk about going offtopic... :oops:

--janak

[dean_shan]

Talk about going offtopic... :oops:

Oh it's all good. That was a very good tanget.

[Zack Mahdavi]

Ah the memories! I still have an accoustic coupler here somewhere! I remember too, how cool I thought those first Hayes modems were, you could sit your AT&T phone right on top of them. Remember how the "feet" of the phones sat in the grooves on either side of the top of the modem? They looked so cool! :oops: :wink:
Yep - we had a setup just like that at home. And those 8 lights... it's been awhile. ;)

Talk about going offtopic... :oops:

--janak

I miss Hayes modems. They looked like something from Star Trek.

[Jon Westfall]

Talk about going offtopic... :oops:

Oh it's all good. That was a very good tanget.

Allow me to bring us back to topic! After reading this thread I got re-interested in the various bootable linux distros, and to make a long story short, my A+ Cert. class now has an extra credit assignment to explore linux bootable CDs and do a small report...

[Sven Johannsen]

OK, suffer me one more off-topic, but I have to respond to the assorted one-ups-manship (or is it one-downs-manship). My initial computing experience was on a teletype, keyboard in, yellow roll paper output, acoustic coupled modem to a timeshare downtown. We did have a paper tape reader and cutter so we could save our work ;) This was High School. Did run calculations with more accuracy than the old slide rule, though it was slower. :lol:

[nosmohtac]

5.25 floppy drives

Ah yes, memories of Kindergarden. I remember I thought they were old even then. By first grade they were out.
Hmm. You must be younger than me. My 486DX2/66 that I got in high school had a 5.25" drive. And before that I used them with my C64. Between the C64 and the 486 I used my parents' computers - macs (as in, Mac, later Mac Plus), that had 3.5", but didn't have hard drives until later. I also had an Amiga 500 in high school that used 3.5". I had an expansion for it that fit a 20 meg hard drive. I still have it in a bin in the basement.

Hmmm. You must be about the same age as me. my high school computer was very similar. I remember my first PC had 4KB of RAM, NO HD that I can remember, and programs were loaded in off of Cassette. I think it was a Tandy TRS-80 Model I. I remember how excited I was when my dad bought a Model III with dual 5 1/4" drive and (I think) 64K of RAM.

[Janak Parekh]

OK, suffer me one more off-topic, but I have to respond to the assorted one-ups-manship (or is it one-downs-manship).
OK - you win. Happy? :P Although if Bev were to get in here... ;)

I remember my first PC had 4KB of RAM, NO HD that I can remember, and programs were loaded in off of Cassette.
Hmmm. The first IBM PC 5150s came with a whopping 16KB of RAM (http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=274), not 4KB. ;) I remember upgrading that 16KB to 64KB on later mainboards by installing 36 (not 32, you needed parity for 4 banks!) chips. Took freaking forever.

And I think this thread is officially derailed. :oops: Kati and/or Steve have license to twak me...

--janak

[dh]

For some reason, I only just found this thread. I've been thinking of replacing the OS on my iMac with Linux and have just downloaded Yellow Dog Linux, which seems to be the most popular one at the moment.

The installation is currently in progress and I'm hoping that the iMac will boot OK when it's done.

If this works out OK, I'd seriously consider getting a PowerBook (maybe a refurbished one) and doing the same thing. I love the Mac hardware but am not interested in their OS.

Oh, to get back on the unofficial topic, my first computer was an Atari ST. With it's GEM GUI it was great for it's time. :D

[dean_shan]

I tried YDL on my PowerBook. It was nice but had no drivers for the new 802.11g card. I took it off mine and tried it out on an old iBook and worked fine with the standard 802.11b card. They might have drivers for the new cards now but I havn't checked.

[Zack Mahdavi]

I tried YDL on my PowerBook. It was nice but had no drivers for the new 802.11g card. I took it off mine and tried it out on an old iBook and worked fine with the standard 802.11b card. They might have drivers for the new cards now but I havn't checked.

No drivers yet for the 802.11g Airport Extreme cards. The problem is that these cards use a Broadcom chipset, and Broadcom generally doesn't like to make Linux drivers or even release enough information for Linux developers to make their own drivers. So I think we'll be waiting a while for the Airport Extreme linux drivers.

I have Yellow Dog installed on my 12" Powerbook, and I love it. It detected everything except for the Airport Extreme card on startup. I know it's possible to get bluetooth to work as well, but I haven't tried to configure it. The only think I don't like about Yellow Dog on newer Apple laptops is that for some reason, their power management daemon won't recognize when you close the lid. Thus, the computer won't go to sleep.

Yellow Dog Linux was last updated in October of 2003. I'm hoping that Yellow Dog will introduce a new version with Kernel 2.6 and KDE 3.2.

[Pony99CA]

OK, suffer me one more off-topic, but I have to respond to the assorted one-ups-manship (or is it one-downs-manship). My initial computing experience was on a teletype, keyboard in, yellow roll paper output, acoustic coupled modem to a timeshare downtown. We did have a paper tape reader and cutter so we could save our work ;) This was High School. Did run calculations with more accuracy than the old slide rule, though it was slower. :lol:
Well, I thought we were discussing computers we owned, not just used. ;-) But I also used a similar setup in high school (senior year, the only grade that could use the computer, I believe). We had a teletype with paper tape system connected to an IBM mainframe running VM/CMS at the Oakland County Board of Education (I think).

College was actually a step down from that -- my freshman computer science class used punch cards. Pfeh! After a few programs, I asked my instructor if I could use the DECWriters (like a teletype, but dot matrix). It was like heaven. :lol:

When I got my Apple II+, I went back to my high school and asked if I could get a log-in to the school district's mainframe to try out my modem. The teacher was kind enough to let me, so I had some fun playing Star Trek. :-D

Steve

[dean_shan]

Broadcom generally doesn't like to make Linux drivers or even release enough information for Linux developers to make their own drivers. So I think we'll be waiting a while for the Airport Extreme linux drivers.
Evil :evil:

I have Yellow Dog installed on my 12" Powerbook, and I love it. It detected everything except for the Airport Extreme card on startup. I know it's possible to get bluetooth to work as well, but I haven't tried to configure it. The only think I don't like about Yellow Dog on newer Apple laptops is that for some reason, their power management daemon won't recognize when you close the lid. Thus, the computer won't go to sleep.

Yeah that's what happened to me. I won't switch because I love WiFi to much.

[dh]

OK, I'm in business. The iMac that had been collecting dust is now a super Linux machine. All I need to do now is get it online.

Think I'll get a Linksys Ethernet Bridge rather than the overpriced Apple Airport Card.

Anyone had any success using the Linksys with Linux by any chance?