HD Install :: DSL on an old Toshiba Libretto



Hello. I've tried Damn small linux and I love it, it works really well and its really lightweight. I was wondering if anyone could help me install it on my Toshiba Libretto 100ct. It's an old, very small notebook, with no cdrom or usb ports. All it has is two pc card slots and an external floppy disk drive. I can use my 128mb compactflash card with it if I use the card reader that goes into the pc card slot.

Right now it has windows 2000 and its really slow, I'd love to have dsl as its main OS.

Thanks

EDIT: I just tried booting from floppy by using bootfloppy.img and copying KNOPPPIX to the C drive. It booted off the floppy but when it tried to load the first file it failed and asked me to insert another disk.
Quote (Vinn @ June 19 2006,22:11)
I was wondering if anyone could help me install it on my Toshiba Libretto 100ct.


Just to clarify: do you want DSL as your *only* OS or in addition to Windows?  And how big an HDD have you available?

I've got DSL running on a Libretto 50CT with a 6Gb HDD, with Win98 as an alternative.  Practically, I haven't booted Windows for ages - apart from anything else it makes a right mess of various BIOS settings, meaning you have to go through the BIOS setup before booting Linux.

The key problem with loading Linux onto the Libretto from the floppy is that the PCMCIA floppy isn't recognised by Linux until various drivers are loaded - and they are only loaded once the BIOS (which can deal with the floppy) has handed over to Linux.  Catch 22!

If you can partition the disk somehow without destroying your Windows system, you can use either a network or your flash card to copy the DSL image onto the Libretto, then run it from within Windows.  I think a Hard Disk Install will then work from there.
Yeah I'd like to get rid of Windows. It runs terribly slow and I don't really like it. The Libretto's got a 5gb hard drive inside.
I really don't care about keeping Windows intact, I'd like to wipe the hdd clean and install DSL on it.

Do I need a certain amout of RAM to run dsl within Windows? Right now this laptop is very sparse, i think only 32mb of RAM. Also, how would I go about running DSL inside windows?
If you're handy with a screwdriver and don't mind taking the disk out, then you could install the disk in another PC, install DSL and put it back. Only thing to remember is to install it as the same ide position in both boxes, most likely primary master.
Quote (skaos @ June 21 2006,09:05)
If you're handy with a screwdriver and don't mind taking the disk out, then you could install the disk in another PC, install DSL and put it back. Only thing to remember is to install it as the same ide position in both boxes, most likely primary master.

The best thing I can see is to do it the way he's got listed.  That shouldn't cause any kind of driver issues or anything else like it would with Windows because DSL auto-configures all hardware when it boots.
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