[Scottish] newbie

[Gordon JC Pearce]

Richard Wright wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I would like to install a distribution of linux onto my own machine and was wondering if anyone could help?
> 
> I am a university student, my old machine (eMac, now broken) was used for word processing and web browsing. It had a basic BSD version of unix. I have recently become interested in programming in unix.
> 
> My Dad has very kindly given me an old laptop of his, a Toshiba Libretto with windows 98 installed. This is the machine I want to install linux onto. It has no CD drive, only a floppy drive. We did have a backpack cd drive but it is lost. It has a pentium mmx (not sure of exact spec) and limited memory. The upshot of this laptop is its miniscule size. It is just about samll enough to fit in a pocket!
> 
> If anyone can think of a suitable linux distribution for an older machine and would be willing to guide me through the installation that would be great. Preferrably it must have a web browser, a word processor (preferrably word compatible), python, java, C compilers, both vi and emacs, and nasm assembly language.
> 
> I have never installed an operating system before and I'm not sure where to begin. The information I found on the internet suggests that my local linux users group is my best bet.

I'm actually running NetBSD on my Libretto 70CT, and have installed it 
on another machine.

By far the easiest way is to whip out the drive and mount it in another 
machine.  This can be a laptop with a CDROM, or a desktop with a 
suitable adaptor for the 44-pin laptop drive.

Unlike Windows, most free as in (beer|speech) Unix-a-likes are pretty 
uncritical about what they are run on.  You can install a fairly basic 
distro (and you will be, with 32M of memory) and at worst all you'll 
have to do is change what kind of driver X uses, possibly other minor 
fettling like that.

The next easiest way is to use a boot floppy and PCMCIA network card, 
but only if you've got two slots - your Libretto might, mine doesn't. 
You could set up SLIP or PPP with the docking station's serial port, but 
that is just too hideously painfully horrible to contemplate.

Finally you *may* be able to get a base install onto it from (lots of) 
floppies, then use a PCMCIA card to go from there.  A variant on that 
would be the method used to install Ultrix and early BSDs on old DEC 
kit, and SCO onto i386 hardware, where you partition the drive into 
"swap" and "everything else", then format the (quite small) swap 
partition as a temporary root, load the installer onto it (from 1/4" 
tape cartridges, back in the day), boot it, and install the "real" OS on 
the rest of the disk.  If that makes no sense to you, don't worry - it 
actually *doesn't* make sense any more.

I can't speak about Linux on the Libretto other than "It works, I've 
seen it done".  NetBSD with the laptop-specific kernel works pretty well 
(nothing too strange, just built with options more suitable for lappies 
like APM and no stonking great RAID arrays).

HTH
   Gordon.