a (not so) easy format and install

[Mets]

Hi guys,

I have a laptop that I'm planning on installing some variant of Linux on. However, I have two slight problems.

The first problem is that my laptop hard drive is already completely formatted. I just have one big partition that is the C:\, and everything is stored on there. Backing up data and blanking the hard drive is really not an option, since I'm at school, and I kind of need my homework. However, I haven't used up all of the space on the disk - it's just all bundled into the main, primary format. Is there a way I can still make this work?

The second problem is that I don't have a CD burner! I know, I know. I just never burn CDs so I didn’t think I needed it. A bunch of my friends have one and I'm sure they'd let me use it, but I was wondering if it was possible instead to do a network install, either by booting with the good old fashion floppy disk or maybe even with a flash drive.

Any help would really be appreciative. I just finished watching the movie Antitrust, and am totally freaked out

Mets

[oz]

First off... welcome to the forums!

Sure, you can do an FTP install with many different distros, and you can get it going with a floppy boot disk since you have no cdrom.

Here's the installation manual with the instructions you'd need if you wish to install my favorite distro, Arch Linux:

http://www.archlinux.org/docs/en/gui...e.html#install

Other distros have similar options, so good luck and have fun with it!

[Mets]

hey ozar,

Thanks for the welcome! Thanks for recomending Arch - I'm in the process of checking that out right now.

How about the formatting though - will it still work?

Mets

[marlowe]

maybe you can get a FTP server on one of your friends computer, upload everything there and then wipe and install as usual.