Can Linux be installed to a laptop 286 monchrome...?

[lpbm]

Help!

I've got an very very old laptop of generation 286, which hasn't any cd rom nor of modem access.

It is monochrome with a HDD of 300MB...

Questions:

If I remove the windows 3.1 and reformat it, what distribution of Linux I can install without using CD-ROM? Can any senior linux user help me?

Can I write Perl program (Just learned the word Perl few days ago) with it?

Thank you all in advance!!!

[mdwatts]

As far as I know, only a 386 and up.

You can try http://old.lwn.net/Distributions/ to see if they have anything that might work.