I use XOSL and am a big advocate of it. But you may have a lot of trouble installing it without a floppy drive. The installer really wants a floppy, I would suggest hooking up a temporary floppy for the install. If you have a system where that can't be done (such as a notebook) then a USB floppy might work, but be aware that unless your BIOS lets you see the USB floppy as a regular floppy drive (some do) or you have a version of DOS that gives you USB support, the USB floppy approach may not work. If you do manage to install without a floppy pleae post back what you did.

Also be aware that XOSL hasn't been updated in quite a while and I am hearing that it does not support SATA drives (I don't have SATA and can't test or confirm that).