On Tue, 29 Jan 2002, Bill Layer wrote: > It depends a lot on what distro you are talking about, and how you can > manage to install it. Which distribution are you planning on using? > > Does this laptop have: > > - a CDROM drive? > - an Ethernet connection? > - PCMCIA slot(s)? > - a parallel port? Dangit, I wish I could make it!! I have a Thinkpad 700C that's driving me nuts. 4 MB of RAM, no CD, PCMCIA slots dying, dead, or otherwise out of the picture. Armed wth the 4 MB laptop HOWTO and the PLIP howto, I discover the f&&^&*^*U(*'n drive is ESDI!!! Try finding a root disk that boots in 4 MB of RAM with ESDI support in the kernel. Not a simple task. I'm going to try MCA linux but I have a strong suspicion it needs >4 MB of RAM (it's actually some dirty hacks to Debian 1.2). I've learned a lot about rolling your own root disks this past week. Anyway, if your drive is IDE it's a piece of cake to install on a 4MB laptop. Use mulinux to fdisk, mkfs, and cp the image to the drive, reboot, viola, your distro of choice's installer boots and you're off. Even simpler, if Debian floats your boat, they've already given you a disk that boots up in <4 MB. I didn't see it in the newer versions but I know for sure slink-2.1 had it. If Debian offends you (freak!) the 4MB HOWTO has some great tips for the newer distros. There, some advice for the upcoming installfest. -Brian