As might be the case with a lot of us I have two completely useless computers (a 386 and a 486) sitting in my basement collecting dust. I have tried numerous things to get them to do something useful. A while back I actually put them on my network running DOS. Yes, as ridiculous as that sounds it worked for a while but it uses a ton of memory and stuff would crash. It was also stupid because I couldn't use them as a file server since DOS only allows 8 letter long file names.
I was wondering if anybody has installed a form of Linux from floppy disks on similar really old machines and what their results were.
one of my first experiences installing linux was installing slackware (http://www.slackware.com) from the disk sets, as literally sets of floppy disks (http://www.userlocal.com/articles/slackware-manage-byds.php) (userlocal.com) i did this for several reasons: i had a 28.8 modem and it took a while to download even a floppy disk's worth of files, i had no cd-r drive, no money to buy a cd, and no network connection on the machine i was going to install linux on. my results? quite possible, but also very cumbersome to use so many pieces of an already arduous and unreliable media. and i quickly found out that a computer without a network interface is BORING.
nowadays you can get linux on a floppy or two, but that also sounds pretty limiting. try to get something on CD...