Installing Linux on a P1

[macdude425]

I want install Linux on my P1, but it doesn't have a CD drive, and I really don't want to bother with putting one in. So how should I go about installing Linux from floppies? And which distro should I choose?

 

[horndude]

the only one I know of is slack 3.5, very hard to find these days, I have a copy I can setup for you to download but I really dont recommend it, linux has come a long long way since then, your better of with something newer

better off with either a CDROM install of something new or a network install of something new, ive never done a network install,I know it can be done though

gentoo might allow a floppy install with just the first stage done from floppy then the rest over the net but im not sure, I think stage 1 is 27mb

 

[Polymorphic]

does it have a network card? if so most distros should work with one or two floppies.
the best one i can recommend from experience is a modern slackware distro.

just make a floppy from a boot.i image and a rootdisk image. then write pcmcia.dsk (probably) and network.img to floppies. ok, so that's 4 disks. with some juggling you can make it two floppies - who has extra floppies hanging around nowadays anyway .

when u boot ur boot disk, it will ask for the root. swap disks and when you get to the shell prompt, after logging in (just hit enter twice), type pcmcia [enter] and network[enter].

that will get you up and running. just set up the slackware cd as an NFS share on another machine, and connect up to it in the "source" part of the slackware setup. should be no prob after that. slack is prolly the best for an older pentium anyway.

--Polymorphic Anomaly

btw, horndude: 3.3 is the latest that will install purely from floppy, including all non-essential package sets., and you can get it off any full slackware mirror.

 

[horndude]

3.5 will do floppy too, i have a copy of it

as far as mirrors,sure, but you have to download each and every piece one at a time unless the mirror allows a bot(wget or whatever), been there done that, most wont let that happen, tried that a couple weeks ago

 

[Polymorphic]

hmm - was unaware of 3.5 - mayhaps an afterthought release due to demand for a newer floppy-based slack? *shrug*

anyhoo, still ancient - nothing like the linux world of today, however not bad for a barebones setup...

 

[horndude]

actually your right, just checked, a few of the packages are too big for a floppy,at least a 1.44mb one anyway, most of them are ok though, your right it is ancient

its good for making a floppy or mini distro though

 

[Polymorphic]

indeed. i havent done the slackware-over-nfs setup in a long time, but it should still work. i believe you can also use an ftp share or even an smbfs share - does anyone have experience doing this? the versions i remember doing this with are 3.3, 3.4, 4.0, 6, 7, 8, and 9.0 but i still see the ".dsk" images in the rootdsks directory in 10.1.

 

[horndude]

ftp share, ya ive done that once, it isnt for rookies though, thats for sure

 

[Polymorphic]

ftp no, but nfs isnt a big deal to set up on either the server or client (machine to be installed). smbfs if it works may be a nice alternative for people with 'doze networks, but will be more of a headache than nfs, so choose nfs if you can.

 

[Qiranworms]

the only one I know of is slack 3.5, very hard to find these days, I have a copy I can setup for you to download but I really dont recommend it, linux has come a long long way since then, your better of with something newer

better off with either a CDROM install of something new or a network install of something new, ive never done a network install,I know it can be done though

gentoo might allow a floppy install with just the first stage done from floppy then the rest over the net but im not sure, I think stage 1 is 27mb

Gentoo? Pentium 1?

It'll be years before the base system compiles...


No, but seriously, Gentoo is a very flexable installation. You don't need to download the first stage at all. In fact, you can install it from another working system. So what he can do, is install slack 3.5 if you give it to him, connect to the internet from that, and then install Gentoo like that. The catch is you need another partition as you obviously can't format the partition you're using, and a system without a CD-ROM drive probably doesn't have such a big hard drive...and the compile times ARE an issue on such a machine...

There's Tiny Linux...probably worse than Slack 3.5 though, I don't even know that even COMES with X...