How to install Linux on a laptop w/o CD or floppy?

[ucfswimmer]

Specifically, I'd like to install Gentoo on my new laptop..it's an IBM X31, the really small and light one without a cdrom drive built in or a floppy drive..i caqn use an optical drive with the additional docking station (which i havent purchased yet)...

and now i'd like to dual-boot linux and windows...the laptop has a compactflash slot (and i have a 192mb compactflash card) and usb ports with the ability to boot to usb (and i have a 64mb sony memory stick)...

now i'd prefer to use the memory stick, but if more than 64mb is needed, than thats fine...

so anyways, what exactly would i need to put on either the compactflash card or memory stick in order to get my laptop ready to install linux on it...btw, it does have a built-in nic, so if i can a barebones distro up and going, i think i can partition it, then download the stage1 tarball and begin from there....

thanks for the help guys

~jeff~

 

[injinj]

in the old days, b4 cdrom, I used to install from one hard drive to another in one system and tranfer the harddrive to the other system. I haven't tried it, but it looks like knoppix has a usb option http://rz-obrian.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de/knoppix-usb/

 

[ucfswimmer]

injinj..you rock...damn small linux was exactly what i was ooking for..with instructions on booting it and whatnot...after that i think i can handle getting the gentoo installation started..and if not, ill post in the gentoo forums..thank you...if anyone else has any other tips, please feel free to add..

~jeff~

 

[injinj]

It does sound kinda cool. I could carry around linux on my keychain, and like Homer would say, go on an "old-time freak-out" spreading linux on windows machines everywhere.

 

[Arkaine23]

I know you could download the iso for gentoo, then use something such as damn small knoppix from a usb keychain, then mount the gentoo iso in a loopback and install that way.

 

[Gnufsh]

Would this work?
boot from a keychain if you can, get net working, mount and format hdd, download stage1 tarball for gentoo to your hdd and extract it to, chroot, and finish the install like normal?

You could just get a usb enclosure and put a cdrom drive in that... I think you can make tose bootable.

 

[ookabooka]

the stage one tarball is only like 15 MB, if you can boot from a USB drive(compact flash) then you ought to be ok, I just don't know about booting from a USB drive. . . sounds iffy to me.

edit: reading that site. . . DSL(damn small linux) wow, thats crazy, 51 MB, and you have X,fluxbox, xmms, basically knoppix. Crazy. And I was proud of my 300 MB installation. . .