How to install Linux through Windows

[sswats]

I have a small sony Pentium 3 laptop with 256mb ram running Windows XP.

I want to replace it with Linux.
unfortunately the PCMCIA connected CD drive is faulty.
And it doesn't boot from USB
But i can get into Windows.

I want to put a small easy to use Linux, maybe Puppy or DSL or whatver else is recommended.

Any ideas how I'd go about doing that?

 

[Una]

Does your bios support network booting?

 

[sswats]

unfortunately no

 

[JIM_BOB7813]

You could try putting the bootloader (GRUB) on floppy disk and tell it to boot from USB.

edit: Or you can install linux on a virtual hdd (vmware or virtual box etc. on main PC) then you can connect the laptop drive to your main PC, boot the virtual machine using a live CD, and dd the virtual HDD to the laptop HDD. (not sure if that would be bootable though?)

 

[BillytheImpaler]

If you plan on keeping Windows you can use the Wubi installer for Ubuntu. You'd download the disk image and mount it with something like Daemon Tools.

 

[Una]

Well really you only got a few options then if you want linux native. Boot a floppy based distro and install over the net, boot a floppy and install from USB or take the hard disk out put it in another computer and write a linux filesystem/bootloader to it then put back in laptop.

 

[matja]

I've installed Linux from Windows before by resizing the C: partition to make space for Linux, mounting the HD as a raw disk in VMware server (inside Windows), booting a linux .iso that i downloaded, installing in the free space and installing the MBR as normal. Shutdown VMware, reboot, and you should have a nice GRUB menu with Linux and your existing Windows.

Linux wont care that the VMware hardware that you installed with is totally different from your real hardware that you boot natively with, because it does proper plug-n-play, unlike Windows (and depending on your distro; i.e., RHEL/Centos/old Fedora handles this very poorly)