Hi ppl, I am trying to get linux running on an old laptop and have a few questions if anyone can help; Dell Lattitude 450mc Laptop Dx2-50mhz 20MB Ram, 700Mb Ata HD. PCMCIA 56k psion Gold card modem. NO CDROM, Floppy Only. 1. Which flavour of Linux can I run on this Spec..would realy need KDE since I am all new to linux.. 2. How can I install it? I only have a floppy drive anf 700mB HD.. No network cards present. Can I direct cable connect to my other Pc through LPT and install like that.. AKA old dos Intersrv & interlnk? 3. Will linux support the PCMCIA since that is my modem card? many thanks Stevie

I have Linux on a laptop of that spec, but with a 200mb harddisk. You can forget about KDE right away, and although it would run, I wouldn't use any GUI at all. What are you planning to use it for? If it is going to be a basic network terminal, you can get by without a GUI (there are different console clients for browsing, mail, irc, icq etc). If you are going to be (learning) programming, then you'll be OK. Otherthings, such as word processing or image manipulation are going to be trickier. I use Debian. This is a good choice because it is light, it can be installed via floppies + modem, and it has a wide range of software available so that you don't have to compile stuff for yourself (which would be very slow on your machine!). The downside is that it is a little harder to install than newbie friendly distros such as Mandrake. Having said that, I'd like to see how easy mandrake is to install without a CDROM or a network! The debian installation guide is here: http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/install You have two choices. Either you can put the necessary files on ~27 floppy disks, or you can do a harddisk install, which means copying most of the files onto a dos partition on your laptop, and using them during the install. If you do this, you will probably just need 2 disks. This is probably the best if you want to continueusing dos as a dual boot afterwards. If don't want to, you can format this partition for Linux use, after the install. The rest of the install can be done with the modem (which will be fine under Linux). It would take about 2 to 4 hours to download all the stuff you would need, of course depending on how much stuff you want to install!

Thanks very much Richard, very helpfull indeed. I plan to use it to get mail & browse on the move and as you said just to learn a bit of programming and Linux in general. I thought that if I streamlined the daemons runnig etc I would get away (just) with running KDE..anyhow I shall see how it goes. Thanks again Stevie