[Cialug] boot floppy to boot from usb

[Matthew Nuzum]

On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 8:56 PM, Dan Hockey <icepuck2k at gmail.com> wrote:

> I found ubuntu moblin remix and now I'd like to try it on an older P1 75mhz
> laptop(no cdrom), but the problem I ran into is I need something to boot
> from a floppy that can then boot linux from the usb flash drive.
>  Dos boot floppy with usb drivers didn't work so I'm guessing some form of
> l inux with usb drivers is what's needed?
>

I suspect you're not going to get a satisfactory experience on a 75MHz
laptop w/ a modern Linux. You can still use these older computers for
real-world tasks. Running the latest media-rich, connected desktop may not
be one of them.

What you may want to consider doing is looking for a tiny linux distro
optimized for these older computes. There are some around though I haven't
used one in a long time. Was Puppy one such?

Being the glutton for punishment that I am, I'd probably get a slightly
older debian distro that can boot from floppy and do a basic install with
that to get a bootable command line environment w/ networking support. Then
use that as a foundation to upgrade to a newer distro.

Fluxbox and some of the other *box window managers work well for older
computers. You can install these to get a working desktop.

w3m is an interesting semi-graphical web-browser that works both from the
command line and in a desktop environment. mutt is a useful command line
mail program and there are even tutorials on the web to get you connected to
gmail using imap. claws is a simple desktop based email program that works
very nicely.

-- 
Matthew Nuzum
newz2000 on freenode, skype, linkedin, identi.ca and twitter
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