About FTP install (for SID)
 

Hello Everyone,

I have a cablenet connection to the internet and want to try debian. I have been using slackware linux for about 3 years now and would like to try debian and its apt-get feature.

How do we do an ftp install of debian? I heard that woody and sarge are very absolete, is there any way that I can install debian from SID directly? I mean I don't want to download 100s of MB and then download 100s more MB just to get them updated.

In short, is there a way to make an SID install (unstable install) via FTP. If so how?

Thankyou all in advance...

Yes you can, you need the net-install iso which you can get from here:

http://gluck.debian.org/cdimage/testing/netinst/i386/

I'm not quite sure what the difference between the 'businesscard' and 'netinst' versions is beyond the size so to be safe I'd just go for the 'netinst' version and since you say you have cable, an extra 30Mb's won't really matter.

Be warned though: The net-install CDs use a radically different install setup to the regular Debian CDs, it's much harder to get your head around but it's relatively simple, just read each screen carefully and if you *really* don't understand something then chances are you don't really need it.

Bear in mind though that this really only installs a basic set of packages, you'll want to apt-get install gnome afterward to get a working graphical environment up and running.

Thanks LSD,

Are there any other methods?

I'm not sure, I think you might be able to use a regular Woody CD to do the installation but instead of using the CD-ROM as your source, pointing it to a Sid source instead but I don't know if that's even possible.

Yep you can use Woody's cd to install a base system and then once you have your cable net setup & working, get the source.list files for Sid to upgrade to Sid.

I'm at work now but I can post my Sid source.list file when I get home if you need it.

That isn't what I meant though, I meant using a Woody CD to install Sid right off the bat, no Woody packages getting transfered to your system at all. I know it's possible to upgrade to Sid after installing Woody but he's not interested in that only in doing an network install.

This is what I was going by!