Tom's GNU/Linux on a Single Floppy

You may not even need a tiny Linux. However, I can recommend Tom's tomsrtbt as an easy way to create a bootable Linux on one floppy. Item 4 of Tom's FAQ lists five simple steps for installing tomsrtbt.

My own starting point was to download tomsrtbt-1.7.361.tar.gz and burn it on a CD. This was done using Windows 98 because of my limited Linux skills. You will be typing tomsrtbt a number of times, and so you may want to think of that as 'toms root boot'. Working in Konsole, I made myself root

Next, I copied tomsrtbt-1.7.361.tar.gz from /mnt/cdrom/ to /home/george/ and unzipped

Then

After changing my directory to tomsrtbt-1.7.361,

You will be asked to insert a blank floppy. Don't mount the floppy; just stuff it in and remember 'no bad sectors'. Tom's install formats the floppy and creates a bootable single-floppy Linux.

I chose to boot Tom's Linux on an old Windows 95 machine.

The Tom who created this procedure is Thomas A. Oehser. My thanks to him and best wishes to Sundance, Béla, and Zina Xena.