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ged25
October 25th, 2010, 08:04 PM
I have an old laptop on which I'd like to install a lightweight distro. My problem is that it doesn't have a cd drive and it cannot boot of a flash drive. How can I install it?
koenn
October 25th, 2010, 08:15 PM
does it have a floppy disk drive ?
KiwiNZ
October 25th, 2010, 08:24 PM
I think the only Boot it is worth is a boot clear across your back yard into your waste bin :p;)
FuturePilot
October 25th, 2010, 08:26 PM
Pxe
kaldor
October 25th, 2010, 08:27 PM
I was in that situation too. 8 MB of ram and a bricked Windows 95 that refused to boot. No use.
Moozillaaa
October 25th, 2010, 08:30 PM
I think the only Boot it is worth is a boot clear across your back yard into your waste bin :p;)


Not very Enviro-friendly ... [-X
koenn
October 25th, 2010, 08:31 PM
I think the only Boot it is worth is a boot clear across your back yard into your waste bin :p;)

you need to talk to K.Mandla

http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2009/04/11/three-reasons-to-buy-an-old-computer/

http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2007/09/14/things-to-do-with-an-old-computer/
mrtomservo
October 25th, 2010, 08:39 PM
You might want to try pulling the hard drive from the old pc. Using a laptop-IDE/USB adapter, put it in another pc just to install the OS, and plug it back into the old PC. I've done that a few times when the old systems wouldn't support PXE, also had to do it on a netbook recently that wouldn't boot via USB. Good for you for trying to find a use for an older machine!
KiwiNZ
October 25th, 2010, 09:24 PM
Not very Enviro-friendly ... [-X

I was referring to one of these ......
undecim
October 25th, 2010, 10:06 PM
Debian's (and Ubuntu's) net install isos use only the kernel and the initrd, which means the drive they're loaded from aren't mounted. So if you have an external hard drive case that fits the drive, you can put a net install iso on it with Unetbootin, and then reformat it from the installer.
Dr. C
October 26th, 2010, 02:52 AM
I have an old laptop on which I'd like to install a lightweight distro. My problem is that it doesn't have a cd drive and it cannot boot of a flash drive. How can I install it?

What are the specs? I assume it has a floppy drive. There are many GNU / Linux distributions that fit in one or two floppies. http://www.linuxlinks.com/Distributions/Floppy/ Now to create the floppies one can a use a GNU / Linux computer with a floppy drive.