Distros : Debian - Network Install

Debian is a community supported Linux distribution established in 1993. It calls itself The Universal Operating System which is a fair statement to make as many Linux distributions are based on it.

Installing Debian was considered hard with many choosing the more user friendly Distros based on it such as Ubuntu, but since 2005 the experience has improved.

Debian’s Website has many installation options with excellent documentation, they always press for Open Software which is very laudable, and until recently their main installation images had no proprietary software - firmware that your laptop wireless network, video drives etc. probably needs to operate.

You had to dig around Debian's website to find where they hid the unofficial non-free installation images which contains those proprietary software making for an easier install.

Click on that link now will bring you to this message...

UPDATE 10 Jun 2023: As of Debian 12 (Bookworm), firmware is included in the normal Debian installer images. USERS NO LONGER NEED TO LOOK FOR SPECIAL VERSIONS HERE.

If you have a fairly modern PC (under 10 years old) and good internet connection, the easiest thing to do is Click the Download link on Debian's home page and the first link on that page is the most popular image for the modern 64 bit PC. Clicking on it will download the image which is small- 627MB. You burn this image onto a CD or a DVD or the modern way - a 1GB USB key, you pop that disc or USB key into your PC, shut it down and then reboot (hopefully) into a bare Debian system.

Did that all work out for you?? great, time to install Debian, move on to Location and Network..

Need more options???

Debian supports many more processor architectures, check Current CD/DVD Releases

Debian supports many Processor Architectures

The amd64 is for the 64bit PC mentioned above and the i386 is the older 32bit PC (not dead yet), also the ARM processor (the new kid on the block) as well as MIPS, PPC64 and s390x (is that a mainframe computer??), yes a truly universal operating system.

Click on amd64 to see all the download options - ranging from an image that fits onto a CD, a full featured installation disk that fits onto a DVD or 4GB USB key, brill for someone that has poor or no internet and why not go all out and get yourself a huge image that needs a blue-ray disc or 16GB USB Key.

Debian Images for the 64bit PC with options for BitTorrent and Jigdo.

Clicking on the iso-cd/ will bring you to the page where that nifty 64bit net install image is hanging out with two other versions, one with a focus on education and one for the Apple Mac!!!

Debian 64bit Net Install Official now with non-free software.

There are also two checksums SHA256SUMS and SHA512SUM that you can use along with the sha256sum and sha512sum commands to prove that the image downloaded correctly and their .sign files, the digital signature signed by Debian which you can use to prove that the checksums are indeed from Debian and not placed there by a malicious hacker along with their doggy ISOs.

As the ISO is small in size your web browser should do the job so Right Click the link and choose where you want to save it, create a folder. call it let me see... Debian and save it there rather than get lost with a whole pile of stuff in your Download folder.

And while you are at it, download the checksum stuff as will, Linux comes with plenty of tools to work with these, do you want to see what Windows has to offer??

I use Linux so I prefer to Right Click and Copy the link then open a terminal and use the wget command and Paste in the link, then hit Enter.

$ wget https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/current/amd64/
iso-cd/debian-12.1.0-amd64-netinst.iso