I am a complete linux beginner. I have an old computer with windows me that I hardly ever use so I thought I would install debian linux on it as a learning experiment. I have downloaded the first cd iso for debian and I checked the BIOS if I could boot with the cd. Unfortunately the computer is so old that it doesnt support booting from the cd-rom. In school we used something that was called a syslinux floppy to start the computer and to partition the hard drive before we installed windows and linux. Fdisk was on the floppy. I have looked at the syslinux homepage but as with all information aimed at linux users it could just as well have been written in greek. A linux beginner such as myself dont understand a word of it. I''m not planning an a multiboot computer. I will partition it only for linux. So the question comes down to, how do I create a floppy that I can use to boot the computer, start partioning the hard drive and install debian?

Debian comes with boot floppy images. Use rawrite or another disk image-writing program to write them to disk. Read the installation manual for more info.

How appropriate. You fight like a cow.

I have a laptop that doesn''t even have a CDROM drive. Look up Debian bootfloppies. If you have a nice network connection, you can download the entire base install of Debian so you would only need 6 floppy disks rather than 20.

Keep in mind that the floppy images are meant to be copied bit for bit using rawwrite or something similar (all of which should be provided on the Debian website for bootfloppies). Don''t copy the image over to the disk like it was a file or it won''t work or won''t fit.

Thanks found those images.

The problem now is I couldnt find any info on how to use one of this floppys to start the installation on the cd.
Is there anyone here who knows how to do this?

Did you read the manual?? you put in the disk, you turn on the computer. Not hard.

How appropriate. You fight like a cow.