Finally, Linux set foot on my laptop.
I choose Debian as my first try, since I believe it would cause me less pain. Actually, installing Linux on a box without cdrom or diskette is not very easy. I finished my task in following steps:
0. I was using Windows XP.
1. Prepare free space on my hard disk, i.e. unpartitioned space. 12G in my case.
2. Download and install Grub for dos
3. Download the first Debian iso image to my hard disk. ( You can also install Linux through internet without downloading this)
4. Restart the computer and use grub to start the install process.
5. Happy installing.
6. Reboot to see the penguin.
Trouble shooting
1. I failed to install grub for Linux as the last install step, which made my computer unbootable from hard disk. I had to boot my box from usb disk and reinstall grub.
2. When using fdisk for Linux to set the active flag for disk partition, it ended up with two active partitions, which made the computer unbootable again.
3. When booting dos from usb disk, the hard disk is recognized as the second disk (with letter D), and I can't change active flag with fdisk for dos.
I managed to boot into Linux with loadlin.exe to correct the error above.
