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Which Linux with GUI (floppy only)

MotionMan

MotionMan

Lifer
I have an OLD Toshiba Satellite Pro 435CDS Laptop (Pentium 120 mhz, 16 mb RAM, 1.295 gb HD). Unfortunately, the CD-ROM gave up the ghost (Anyone have a Toshiba Model XM-1502B CD-ROM laying around?) and this thing has no USB, NIC or even modem to hook up to.

What is a good version of Linux (with a GUI) that I can run exclusively from a floppy for some simple tasks.

Thanks.

MotionMan
 
Define "simple tasks". Linux is flexible, but it's not some magic potion that can miraculously make a 10-year piece of hardware cutting edge again. Damn Small Linux is as good as any other tiny distro, but if you've only got 16MB of RAM I can't see what you would be able to accomplish apart from maybe running a few xterms to ssh/serial into other machines.
 
Originally posted by: cleverhandle
Define "simple tasks". Linux is flexible, but it's not some magic potion that can miraculously make a 10-year piece of hardware cutting edge again. Damn Small Linux is as good as any other tiny distro, but if you've only got 16MB of RAM I can't see what you would be able to accomplish apart from maybe running a few xterms to ssh/serial into other machines.
Click to expand...

Oh, I am just looking to play around - Nothing specific in mind right now.

I guess I am just looking for something to do with this thing while I decide whether to trash it or find a new CD-ROM for it.

MotionMan
 
So your cd drive doesn't work at all? You'd be hard pressed to find a linux based distro based around one floppy that contains a gui. DSL runs great on 16 megs of ram (I've tried it on my old lappy before) and there are boot floppies available, but I think it'll still require a cd drive.

Do you have another laptop lying around? Have you tried putting the hard drive in another laptop, installing a lightweight linux distro (DSL is my recommendation), and placing it back in the older lappy?
 
Originally posted by: SleepWalkerX
So your cd drive doesn't work at all?
Click to expand...

Even better - just I got the unit, and it does not have one (I was told it died a while ago and discarded).

You'd be hard pressed to find a linux based distro based around one floppy that contains a gui. DSL runs great on 16 megs of ram (I've tried it on my old lappy before) and there are boot floppies available, but I think it'll still require a cd drive.

Do you have another laptop lying around? Have you tried putting the hard drive in another laptop, installing a lightweight linux distro (DSL is my recommendation), and placing it back in the older lappy?
Click to expand...

As a last resort, I will pull the hard drive and put it in another unit. I have an adapter for lappy drives to IDE. I was hoping to avoid that, but, oh well.

MotionMan
 
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