Suggestions for Debian floppy boot/network install?

[Norcal_linux]

Hi everyone, I am embarking on an all day debian install project, and I wanted to get a heads up to any problems someone may have already experienced... I say all day in the sense of having underpowered hardware here.

I am going to install debian 4.0 on my old Toshiba Portege 610ct laptop. It is a pentium 90, and has 40 megs of ram, an 800mb hdd, external floppy drive and no cd-rom. I am going to have to boot from the floppies and do a network install with my pcmcia network card. I was just curious if anyone had some helpful suggestions(?), other than expect the floppy/network install to take all fricken' day on a pentium 90 with 40 megs of ram. If I can get X to work, any suggestions on window managers on the minimal side? Obviously this little boat anchor of a laptop can't run kde or gnome, and probably not xfce either. But any suggestions or criticism is welcome, and thanks in advance for any help, criticism, laughs, beatings, verbal abuse and whatnot...

-Eric-

[netstrider]

Do you want a GUI? If so then you'll have to use something minimal like Fluxbox or maybe Enlightenment...I think XFCE (which I am using) might be a little too heavy...even though it is quite a bit lighter than Gnome and KDE.

[devils casper]

i agree with netstrider. you can use FluxBox or Enlightenment. i am using FVWM these days and very happy with it.

[IsaacKuo]

Good luck! Hopefully, your network card will be detected and all will be good. Otherwise, it may be more trouble than it's worth.

With only 800megs of hard drive space, make sure to use "apt-get clean" often to clear out downloaded package files.

My experience with a Pentium 120 desktop with 48megs of RAM is that you're in for quite a sluggish install! You can almost forget about running Firefox. Dillo is fast and slick, but barely functional for most web sites.

I use IceWM rather than fluxbox. Try it out. Maybe you'd do better with icewm-lite rather than icewm. If you have enough space, install icewm-themes.

Try out aterm instead of xterm. I use xmms for playing music; I don't know if there's something slimmer to use instead. For file browsing, pcmanfm has a good "look and feel", but xfe is faster and slimmer.

[Norcal_linux]

Wow, thanks for all the quick replies everyone. I don't necessarily Need a GUI, but I though if it would work I would have it in case i needed it, or needed to get something off the web, or google something for homework. I use XFCE on my Celeron 400mhz laptop with 256 of ram, and it still can be sluggish at times, so I don't think i'm going to put it on the little pentium 90. I have used fluxbox on DamnSmallLinux before, and was pretty happy with how quick it was and that it didn't hog a lot of screen space. I Haven't measured yet but i think the Portege 610CT has like a 9 x 7 inch screen, so I need all the available screen real estate i can get. If a GUI wont run well, or if I can't get X to work, I can live with a console only, but i'm not 100% capable at the command line. I sometimes still need to fall back to a graphical interface for miscellneous things. Also, I guess if anyone has any objections to why I should choose a different distribution over debian besides personal preference, I am welcome to any suggestions.

Thanks -- I am off to google some more info on getting debian to work on the portege610ct.

-Eric-

[Norcal_linux]

Someone apparently viewed my post as to what I should prepare for with putting debian on my little underpowered laptop, and caught me on my instant messaging program. They offered to sell me a new in box set of install floppies of IBM OS/2 Warp 4, for $35.00

I had to re-read it a couple of times to believe it... I was never a fan of OS/2, while it has its place in history i guess, but for 35.00?? I mean, its on floppies...... good for me in the sense that I ONLY have a FLOPPY drive, but bad in the sense that I highly doubt that the floppies are any good anymore. We'll see how my floppy based debian install goes, if everything else fails i might be the proud owner of OS/2 Warp 4!!