total newbie choosing distro for old laptop

[otbibb]

I am going to start my linux transformation by putting a distro on my old laptop: CTX Easybook (ugh!), Cyrix 586 100mhz, 16MB RAM, 1 GB HD, floppy. I have a PCMCIA CD-ROM, which I assume will be useless for installation purposes.

2 questions:
Which distro is best for this limited environment? Mandrake 7? Slack? I am wary of diving in too deep, but I don't think I need a complete handholding experience.

How do I go about the install? I am not interested in keeping Win95 (naturally). Should I put the iso on the windows partition and install from a loopback? Or should I find a distro that will install from floppy? Or is there a way to do a small install from floppy, config the PCMCIA CDROM and then install from there?

Any help or opinions will be appreciated!

Bryan

[twofoolish2b]

Go with Slackware, you can install with floppies. The base package will support PCMCIA.

[TCaptain70]

Is there an NHF or something that helps with the Slack floppy install? I checked the site and the info seems a bit lean on how to do it.

[thescribe7]

Go with slack. You make the floppies fromt eh cd on another system, in windows even. You just need to copy the contents of the 'A' folders to the floppies, if I'm not mistaken. :D

[undef]

debian is pretty easy to install from floppy too. you need about 11 floppies to have the base files installed. if you're interested go to www.debian.org (http://www.debian.org) from any of their server download the kernel root, drivers images plus the 11 base files.
you also need rawrite to copy the image files to floppy.
to start the installation, first copy kernel and root images to floppy using rawrite.exe follow the instructions that it gives you. the rest is pretty straight forward.

[ 20 June 2001: Message edited by: undef ]

[Shadoglare]

I'll put in a second vote for Debian floppy. the install tripped me up with the swap partitions, but other than that it went pretty smoothly.

[nick098]

It is up to you but I kinda like Red Hat.
but I havn't tried very many:
Corel.....sucks
Debian....ok but I didn't like it too much
Mandrake..seems to be the same as Red Hat
but again it depends on what you think.

[bdg1983]

I'm not sure which ones, but some distros besides having the standard install diskettes also offer a pcmcia disk image that you could possibly use to get your pcmcia cdrom to work during the install.

Check the Slackware ftp servers to see if they have a pcmcia image for the version you are thinking of using.

[jscott]

My Laptop: Toshiba Satellite
90Mhz, 40MB RAM, 2GB HDD


I just put Slack-current on it (was running slack 7.0 for about 1+ year). The only wm I find worth while (speed -vs- usability) is blackbox. It's not the fastest machine for compiling *anything*. However, it works great when you're in class and want to try something without writing it down.


All about floppy boot images.

<A HREF="http://download.sourceforge.net/pub/mirrors/slackware/slackware-current/bootdsks.144/" TARGET=_blank>http://download.sourceforge.net/pub/mirrors/slackware/slackware-current/bootdsks.144/]
here</A>


You should get PCMCIA disk support if you boot (from floppy) using
bare.i (http://download.sourceforge.net/pub/mirrors/slackware/slackware-current/bootdsks.144/bareapm.i)


Then, during install, just point to the cdrom drive as the source for the slack packages.

(edit) fixed link

[ 21 June 2001: Message edited by: jscott ]