[CLUE-Tech] Linux laptop

[Roger Frank]

Haven't had a laptop since I had a real job.  But I saw one surplus
for $100 with 2G drive, 40 MB memory, Ethernet/modem card.  No CD ROM,
and a 75 MHz 486 for a CPU.  I thought it might be a good time to
learn about Linux on laptops.

I'm surprised at how well Linux runs on this little NEC Versa M/75.
I did a floppy install just to get to where it could use the
Ethernet card, and then did the rest of the (Debian) install 
over the network.  I'm using Blackbox as a window manager
and it's quite zippy.  The screen is 800x600 color, but for my 
needs that's just fine.  I've already done some editing with
nedit and I've compiled some Java programs.

Now that it works - and it did take some work to get it going - 
I wish there were a way to do a partition dump thru the serial port.
I know partimage is excellent, but there is no second drive or
second partition.  I'd like to be able to get the exact image of
what's on the disk onto another machine as an image, and I'd
like to be able to restore it easily.  I guess it's the Linux
equivalent of Ghost that I'm looking for.  Any ideas?

Thanks!

Roger Frank