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1. Introduction

Writing a PLIP install HOWTO seems useless nowadays since Ethernet cards are cheap: NE2000 cards cost near the same as a Null-Modem cable. This is true for desktop computers, but not for laptop computers, which the PCMCIA card costs more than 10 times as the Null-Modem cable. Moreover, there is a parallel port on every computer, not a network card.

Of course, this howto can be used to install Linux on every personal computer without loss of generality.

This paper is just what I've done to install a Debian GNU/Linux distribution on a Toshiba Portégé 620CT laptop, from a NFS exported cdrom drive, via a Null-Modem cable.

A Null-Modem cable is also called a LapLink cable but this word is trademarked by Traveling Software under the number 75466713 since 1986, so I won't use it anymore.

This HOWTO will be obsolete when every Linux distribution include a PLIP install option. For example, the Debian installation only needs to add two commands to make this HOWTO obsolete (ifconfig + route). I hope one Debian maintainer will consider this point.

I would be happy to know if someone used the PLIP-Install-HOWTO to install other Linux distributions from other network protocols (ftp, http, nfs, samba, or even NT/Novell servers)

Feedback for typos, bad English, comments, money, job writings, joy, fears, cries are welcome and recommended (not with the same eagerness, choose yours).


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