GNU/Linux Desktop Survival Guide by Graham Williams
Desktop Survival Project Home Preface Advocacy History Distributions Installation Basic Survival Wajig Audio AbiWord APM Backup Bash Booting Cameras CD Chinese ChRoot Clock Commercial Conference Management Configuration CRON CVS Databases DIA Directories Disks Documentation DVD Emacs Email Eye of Gnome Evolution File Systems Firewalls Floppy Disks Fonts Ghemical GIMP Glade Gnome GnuCash Gnumeric GQView Graphics Groups HTML Editors ImageMagick Initialisations on Booting Java KDE Kernels Keyboard Konqueror KVM Switch LaTeX Log System Login Magellan Mathematics Memory Modems Mounting Devices MS/Windows Music MySQL Nautilus Networks NFS NT File System OpenOffice.org Oracle Packages Partitions Passwords PDF Photos PPP Presentations Printing Python R Remote Desktops Rsync Samba Scanning Science Security SH File System Sketch Spell SPlus Spruce SSH SUDO Subversion Swap Themes TV USB Video Virtualization Web Word X XML Sample Installations Troubleshooting Index

The Booting From Floppy Alternative

You don't need to use any special boot programs if you are not comfortable with the process of using a boot loader and modifying the computer's master boot record. Instead, all you need is to boot GNU/Linux from a boot floopy that will be created when you install GNU/Linux. You simply insert the floppy whenever you boot your computer into GNU/Linux and make sure it is not inserted if you want to boot into the original operating system. Booting from floppy is a little slower than booting from hard disk but otherwise functionally equivalent.