Can i run an OS off a cd? Urgent!!!!

[ToyMachine]

im getting a ton of old comps with no hard drives and need to know how to put an operating system on them. Can i run small linux or windows distros off of a cd rom? If so then how ? If not then can i boot off the network assuming they have network cards? How would i do this?

thx

 

[LordKestrel]

Yes you can. A few years ago, there was a linux distro called Demo Linux. They had a full featured linux distribution on cd, based on Mandrake. The URL is Demo Linux

 

[n0cmonkey]

SuSE's eval disk should work too.

 

[NorthenLove]

LinuxIS😵rg <--- Pick up a the Evaluation Cd only ISO for Suse from this site.

 

[Nothinman]

And if you have network cards that support booting from them you could setup rarp and tftp and have Linux boot off the network and mount everything via NFS, it's a lot more work than a CD but would be easier to centrally administer.