let me try and rephrase this question:

I have an old mac laptop w/ os7, I would like to just replace the whole thing w/ Darwin FreeBSD. The laptop doesn't have a cd drive, but it does have an old 3.25 floppy drive and a docking station so I can hook it up to a LAN connection. What is the easiest way to make the change? should I partition it and then load up Darwin, then remove the os7? if so, whats a cheap to free partition tool? if there are other option please spell out the proccess to me, in very lamen terms, since i'm only an Intro to Unix student and I really want something that I can use to learn off of.

If you google "Darwin Apple" it takes you right to what i'm talking about to help clarify my situation.
http://developer.apple.com/darwin/projects/darwin/

im not that familiar with mac, so i guess what your gonna run it on is a powerpc right? you cant use any linux in that case. however, the distros that i know run on power pc is gentoolinux, and yellow dog linux, you can find the links to their websites, just search google. and of course, for a non linux solution, netbsd runs on everything, almost. just search for netbsd on google to find the link. good luck!

Depending on your exact hardware setup, you can install Darwin, several different versions of Linux, and all three of the free BSDs.

If your laptop uses Nubus, you may have to use less functional code, but you'll likely find sonething that works.