newbie - no floppy on old tecra laptop...

[ushere]

hi,

have just installed mint 4 on an old desktop and been very happy with the results, no problem installing / dual booting with w2k, and this is after ubuntu, mepis 6.5 and pclinuxos 2007 ALL failing one way or another.

now i have this old tecra laptop, with no floppy drive. using the live cd i get pass the 'errors' of it seeking the floppy, and end up with a command prompt. i'm not anywhere knowledgeable enough to know what to do either at the prompt, or know of an alternative approach to loading mint 4.

i would appreciate any direction as to how to install without floppy, or internet connection.

tia

leslie

[BlahBlah_X]

Computers without floppy drives can still boot linux. In fact, computers without hard drives can even do so.

So, you are ending up at the command prompt for another reason. Do you see any errors besides those regarding floppy?

At the command prompt, try typing "startx". This will start the x.org server, or the graphical environment. If you get any errors, post them here.

Also, from boot menu, try using different options, or the safe boot mode.

[ushere]

goodness, that was fast, and my delay in replying was due to waiting for the laptop to boot again!

well, having gone through the floppy error again, i get a prompt (without any error):

busybox 1.1.3 (more stuff after this)
(initramfs)

i typed in 'startx', got not recognised command, checked the 'help', and it wasn't listed there either?

i'll go and try rebooting and see what other options i get - but from memory (which isn't that good at my age), i think there's only safe graphic mode and boot from hd - which would take me into w2k. i have to say i'm not too worried about losing the windows installation / partion, etc.,

well, my memory served me well - no other options (f6 presumably let's me type in a command line? if so, i have no idea what to type?)

i'd really like to get mint onto this laptop, but having googled for an answer to installing without floppy for ANY distro, i'm about to give up...

thanks for your time,

leslie

[Fred]

leslie,

Do you have enough ram in the laptop to run Mint 4?

Anything less than 256 MB, you are wasting your time. Even then it will be very slow, especially from a cd on an old cd drive. If you get it running on the cd drive you probably won't get it to install with less than 320 MB.

I have gotten Ubuntu, which requires the same resources, to run and install on old machines by adding ram temporarily for the install and then removing it after the install. The machine will run a bit slow but still faster than Vista.

You might try running a version that isn't quite so resource intensive. Translation, ditch Gnome and KDE.

Good luck,

Fred

[ushere]

thanks fred,

no, probably not enough 128mb. runs w2k slowly, but enough for web and word processing - which is basically what i'm looking for out of linux on it. mint runs like a dream on my old 1.7 / 256mb amd that i saved from the scrap heap of my dead and buried machines...

any suggestion for a distro that would load on the tecra and fulfill the above mentioned requirements, or should i just let it hobble along with w2k?

again, thanks for your time,

leslie

[Fred]

Since you like Mint, and it is a very nice distro, you might want to try XFCE Community Edition. It is much less resource intensive but still a full featured distro.

There are currently two versions available. The latest is still in beta so if you want a solid, stable system stick to the non-beta version. If you like to push the envelope at the expense of some stability then use the beta.

DSL Linux or Puppy linux are also good on old low resource equipment, but won't have the feature set that Mint has. Just depends on what is important to you.

Good luck,

Fred