Can you install linux from a floppy disk?

Briguy

Briguy

New Member
I need to somehow get Small Linux on a floppy or another linux version that will install from off of the floppy. The problem is I have a Toshiba laptop that only has 64mb of ram in it and a very small hard drive and the cd rom on it doesn't work. It's running windows 98 on it.

Any ideas? Maybe somehow split the program across multiple floppy's (that would be a last resort.)
 
The smallest Linux distros I know are about 50 megs, which would be 50 floppies. Does it support USB booting?
 
tlarkin said:
The smallest Linux distros I know are about 50 megs, which would be 50 floppies. Does it support USB booting?
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I don't think it has support for that. I believe it's a Satellite Pro 445CDT or in that range.

Oh man I just looked at some pictures of it it doesn't look like it even has a floppy on it.
 
Briguy said:
I don't think it has support for that. I believe it's a Satellite Pro 445CDT or in that range.

Oh man I just looked at some pictures of it it doesn't look like it even has a floppy on it.
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It no doubt will have a PCMCIA socket on it and then you can get a USB card to fit that :-
311Y4H7CV0L._SL500_AA280_.jpg
:)
 
replace the optical drive, or set up some sort of netboot server and hope you can install it from netboot, or I guess PXE boot since it is on a PC.

Or

Invest your money into something else. A netbook is not that expensive and more powerful than that machine, food for thought.
 
tlarkin said:
replace the optical drive, or set up some sort of netboot server and hope you can install it from netboot, or I guess PXE boot since it is on a PC.

Or

Invest your money into something else. A netbook is not that expensive and more powerful than that machine, food for thought.
Click to expand...

Will any laptop drive work for that model? Also is it possible that it could not be booting from cd because it's a cd-rw disk? When I go into windows it shows the drive in my computer.
 
Briguy said:
Will any laptop drive work for that model? Also is it possible that it could not be booting from cd because it's a cd-rw disk? When I go into windows it shows the drive in my computer.
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No, probably a specific type of optical drive works in that model, most likely you would have to buy one that fit. Your CDROM may not be booting because the boot order is incorrect in the BIOS. If it works in Windows and you can read CDs then it is most likely a BIOS configuration issue.

Some older CDROM drives did in fact have issues reading RW disks, so you may need to burn it to a CDR disk instead.
 
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