12.31.1. Linux Compatibility Check
Usually there are no problems connecting a floppy drive to a Linux
laptop. But with a laptop floppy drive you may sometimes not be able to
use every feature. I encountered the superformat
command (from the fdutils package) couldn't format more than 1.44MB with
my HP OmniBook 800. You may also have difficulty when the floppy drive
and CD drive are mutually exclusive, or when the floppy drive is a
PCMCIA device (as with the Toshiba Libretto 100).
With older laptops, there might be a minor problem if they use a 720K
drive. As far as I know all distributions come with support for 1.44M
(and sometimes 1.2M) floppies only. Though it's possible to install
Linux anyway. Please see Installation chapter. Please see kernel
documentation for boot time parameters concerning certain laptop floppy
drives, for instance IBM™ ThinkPad. Or
man bootparam .
