Table of Contents
Installing Linux From Floppy Disks
| Field | Operating Systems |
| Went Obsolete | mid 1990s |
| Made Obsolete By | The increasing size of distributions, coupled with the increased penetration of CD-ROM drives |
| Knowledge Assumed | Labeling and Keeping track of the 30+ disks needed to load SLS/Slackware Linux |
| When useful | Never. Floppies are dead, and Linux as a distro is too big for 3.5” 1.44s” |
It should be noted that even the kernel itself is no longer able to fit on a standard 1.44M floppy disk. Micro-distros use an older kernel, don't install to the HD, and offer a very slim subset of tools or are written to only do one thing. There's no modern distribution that actually installs a system off 3.5” diskettes; Slackware was the last mainstream distribution to offer this option.
NOTE: Slackware, Debian and Gentoo all still have floppy based installers available, for the current versions of the distros.
Damn Small Linux is actually 50 megabytes, and comes as a ISO file intended for CD-ROM usage.
