(I'm clueless as far as computers go so bear with me.) I have an old Toshiba Tecra 8000 and I would like to run Linux on it. Would this be possible? If it is, can I boot it up from a flash drive I have with the software on it? If so, how would I do this?

Yes, you could run one of the less-demanding distros (DSL, older versions of Puppy, etc.) at a decent speed on that machine, but it would be better to try out a live-distro first, since you state you're "clueless as far as computers go". Installing those require a decent amount of knowledge, and newer/bigger distros would bog the machine down. Just make sure your machine can boot from the CD drive and you know how to burn an ISO image...

If the CD Drive is bootable, then would as above suggested you run a Live CD. I always use Puppy Linux and at 100mb ISO Download, it is small and compact but fully functioning and will give you a good feel for the way Linux functions: http://www.puppylinux.org/ In Windows you can burn an ISO with software like ImgBurn

I doubt you can select a usb flash as a bootable device. You can make a floppy or cd that would then allow you to boot to usb. To make things worse it would most likely be usb 1.1 and really slow. I am kind of impressed with Xpud right now. You need to tell us how much ram you have. If you only have 32 that limits it to a very few choices. Might look at tinycore and dsl. As your system can use a max of 256 this is what limits your choice. Almost any command line can be installed. Your selection of a gui would limit your choice. You can run Knoppix on a much better machine and then run knoppix terminal server on it and pxe or gPXE the laptop to that computer to run NX. If you want you can try netboot.me for a network boot over the internet. (basically gpxe) Playing to the angels Les Paul (1915-2009)