is it possible to install from harddrive?

[Hoo Hoo Nick]

Hi,

i'm not completely new to linux, I have used it a couple of times on a friends PC. I tried to install it on an IBM thinkpad two times, but didn't have any luck with that... the reason? Well it's a few years ago, and I can't really remember.

Now, I have this toshiba laptop that's currently running the win ME installation that came with it, and I'd like to run linux on it instead. One problem though, I can't use my linux CD's as the CD player on it does not work at all. I do have an external CD player if I absolutely need to play CD's on it, but that's a USB one, which isn't only slow, but also doesn't allow me to boot from it.

Is there anyone here that has an idea on how to install linux on it, what distro to use?
One must: I have to be able to use my Gigabyte wifi card after the installation... it's allright if I need to download stuff for that, but if I do, I have to do that before installation (I merely put that here as a reminder for myself, but if anyone can give me a hint on that as well, please don't hesitate to tell me). Thanks!

[genesus]

do you have a floppy drive, if so you could do a minimal cli install of a small distro, and use that to install gentoo on a seperate partition.

[Hoo Hoo Nick]

okay, so i could use that minimal install to access my CD player via USB, and then i'd be able to install the rest, is that what you mean?

[dylunio]

If you have a floppy drive why not boot from it with a bootmanager floppy which will let you boot from the usb cd drive?
I'm not sure if this has a usb booting option, but look at http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/



I think genesus is talking about installing a basic system and then use that to download and linstall gentoo onto another partition on your hard drive, you would be using the basic system instead of the gentoo live cd.

[genesus]

yep...didn't think about the bootmanager option...