I have been thinking about switching one of my machines running Mandriva and windows over to windows and Debian. I don't have a whole lot of space for the linux install, it currently has 3.5Gb for the Mandriva but I was thinking on installing yet another HD to the machine, if its even possible. Under windows I have been downloading the torrents (2) for the Debian installation, but after they are done downloading, whenever that will be, what do I do with them to make a bootable installation CD/DVD? Samw with .iso images? I have lots of downloaded .iso images but have never been able to use any because I can't figure how they are converted into code formart again??

Is the torrent going to be the converted image or is it just a similar format as the .iso and is going to have to be converted into another format before being able to be used?

Thanks in advance, jaydag71

An .iso is not converted back to another format it is simply a bootable disk image with an .iso extension on it when burning to disk you need to choose Create disk from ISO image however it is worded in your burning program. Size wise the 3.5gb is perfectly usable for a Debian install just create a /swap and / partition during install now you won't have a lot space to be putting many big files in it but everyday normal use should work alright. BTW if this computer has reasonably fast internet access your better off getting the net install then booting with it and doing the install over the internet.

Thanks for the reply, but I am still super confised about the .iso images and how to implement them. I have tried to use them in various ways in the past with no sucess.

For example under Suse and Mandriva, if I wanted to install an .iso of auditor 2005 and have it already burned to a cd, when I click on the image it starts the K3b burning software. I have tried fooling around with this a bit and also reading the manual briefly but I don't think that the software is capable of doing an installation, it is just for burning I think.

If this is the case then how do I install the .iso, via the command line and figure out what they are to do the install or is there dedicated software GUI for using these images to do a HD install?

So an .iso that I have found on teh internet can be downloaded to my terminal using the same downloading techniques as for any other files? or are there special methods for these .iso's that decode or encode? When I have downloaded the .iso does it need to be put to a CD or DVD before it can be used or can I install an .iso directly from my HD's downloaded image? Still quite confused and there doesn't seem to be alot online that I've found so far to explain any better??

.iso file is an image file, as was said. It means that somebody has created a CD, a bootable CD (or DVD) in your case, and because physical cd discs are quite difficult to send via the line to your pc these days, the guy who created the CD turned the thing into a single file with a .iso extension. Consider the .iso like a zip archive, except that it's not compressed (so it's like a tar archive, if you like to think it that way).

There are mainly two ways to use an iso image file:

1) Mount the image, i.e. put it's contents visible in some directory. Like mounting the contents of a cd-rom to some directory, like /media/cdrom, on Linux. This means that you can deal with the contents of the .iso file without burning it anywhere. Code on Linux:
Note that for bootable cd discs you must burn them to a cd-rom (in almost every case).

2) Burn the image file onto a cd: this means that the contents of the image file are burned onto the disc, rather than the iso file itself, and the settings (like "bootable") are burned as well. How to achieve: open up a cd writing application (k3b, Nero, ...), pick up an option to burn an image file to a cd/dvd, choose the image file, insert CD and burn it. NOTE: This does not mean that you burn the .iso file onto a cd, but burn the contents of it -- that's what "burn iso file to cd" means, it's a special option in the writing application, not a regular data write.

After the image file is burned to a CD, you'll have a disc that has as it's contents all the files the CD should contain, just like the author of the original disc and the image file wanted to. Wrong way to burn means you'll have a cd with one iso file inside, the right way to burn means you'll have the contents of the iso file inside the disc. After the burn put the disc to the drive and reboot your machine.

EDIT: of course it's possible to "mount" iso images to some directory under Windows, too. For this, though, you'll need a 3rd party application that allows you to mount virtual filesystems, i.e. iso images. In most cases, anyway, you are meant to burn the iso image onto a disc that you can then use just like the discs you buy from the store that contain software -- some people who have turned movies, for example, into .iso files, rather like to mount the image file than burn it, to spare cds.

You said you wanted to install auditor 2005 (if I read right): you said that clicking on the file opened up k3b. That's correct - your system figures out the .iso image is an image of a cd, so it launches a writing application to allow you to burn the contents of the image to a disc. To install the software contained in the image file you will first need to burn it (read: the contents of it) to a disc, then insert that disc you burned and start the installer from there. Or, if the installer allows you to, you can mount the image to some directory on your harddrive (like I described above) and run the installer from there. The best way to think a .iso image file is to think it as the digital representative of a physical disc (cd or dvd); to use it you must "extract" it, dealing with it straight won't work.