Linux on a thinkpad 760XL

Hello All!! This is my first post on these forums, as I have joined today to ask this. What distro should I use with my thinkpad 760XL. It has about 80mb ram, P2 cpu (don't know the full specs), a 12gb hard drive, and floppy. My install options are by floppy, serial, or infrared. The use of this laptop will be as a carpc, mainly and almost only used for music. I don't need a gui, but it would be nice to have the option later if I decide to use it and I would like to be able to use AAlib or whatever to watch videos in terminal. All suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thank you!

I was looking at slackware, it has bootable flappy to install from cd. I have a pcmcia external cdrom drive, but I can't boot from it. But now the laptop won't stay on after I turn it on, its loads the floppy, I see the start slackware screen, and then it shuts off and when I try to turn it back on without unplugging it, it beeps twice and does nothing else.

It has to be able to boot from floppy then to cd, the cdrom isn't bootable. And as to the size of it, I don't care. I put a 12gb hard drive in it and the mainboard can boot it. I just need to get it installed booting from a floppy. I am a little confused how to do so with slackware.

You can try picking one drom this list here also: http://www.linux.org/dist/list.html

I have had success with smart boot manager. I must say I have never tried on a pc of that age. This guy has done netbsd on the same kinda pc with smart boot manager: http://www.stephanmaus.de/netbsd-on-thinkpad-760-xl.htm Once upon a time I bought an older laptop without a cdrom. I had two choices: 1. Take the hd out and use a desktop to install linux (windows by design freaks out when it sees major hardware changes). You can buy an ide 2.5 to 3.5 adaptor to convert the #pins on the laptop drive to the same as that on your standard desktop (not for the feint of heart). I installed knoppix (cf. poor mans install) which allows auto detection every time you boot so that config scripts are generated just like they are on the cd. 2. Use network boot with pxe. If your have a pc card network adaptor that allows network booting you can use a floppy that will allow a network boot on that or the computer's own network adapter. knoppix allows you painless way to setup a pxe boot by serving a knoppix installation from one pc to other pcs over the network. From there you can make changes to your installation as you please. With your limited resources try the smallest distro or installation that works with as little as possible running as possible. Damn small linux, Slax and puppy linux are good bets. Less is more try fluxbox, fvwm, twm windows maker for your desktop window manager as they are light but take a little getting used to. ps. just thought to google this again and there are lots and lots of links with advice on your problem. like this one: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Installation_instructions_for_the_ThinkPad_760#ThinkPad_760XL also note that newer distros have better hardware support but also have bloat as a necessary evil because they need to detect and support so much hardware. When you reach the right level of competency you can roll your own custom configuration that saves on much needed resources. [Modified by: Feisty on August 10, 2008 11:03 PM]