Installing Debian: CD vs. DVDs
 

I would appreciate some help from some of you Debian wizards.

At the Debian download web page, there are many choices for an installation CD. There also is a 4 DVD set. I presume the CD is to get a base system installed. I presume the 4 DVD set is the whole ball of wax.

Yet presumptions are not always a good thing. :) So I would appreciate an explanation about the difference between the two options or just point my nose to the appropriate link. I browsed the Debian online docs, but I did not find an explanation. I am getting older too, so perhaps I saw the explanation and clicked right on by. :D

Thanks for your time and help!

I'd say you are pretty much right there.
I believe that you can do an install either from cd1 or Dvd1.
But the generally recommended way is to use the netinstall disc,and as you say install the minimal system and download the rest from the Web.
Obviously this is dependent on having access to a reasonable internet connection.

Did you see this page:

http://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst#smallcd

The first CD has Gnome as its default desktop environment. The second CD most probably contains OpenOffice along with many other applications (I once used this second CD while installing Testing from the first one). If you want KDE, it's the 42nd CD, second last one.

Don't know about which packages are in which DVD. (Really, why don't they provide some list-files to see this?)

If you will have a network connection while installing, use the netinst CD image.

Yes, thanks.

That is the disk I downloaded. I'm not a GTK fan. At all. Not. :)

Yes, that is part of why I am asking. I have a broadband connection but not the greatest. At night when most folks are smooching and sleeping, I can push about 1.8 Mbps. Not bad but not like the city folk at 7 Mbps. The ISP with whom I contract is a small rural mom-and-pop WISP and the owner tends to watch for heavy download usage during peak hours (until 10PM) and especially business hours (till 5PM). After peak hours the owner looks the other way. But I'm not going to pull an all-nighter with a net-install. :)

My general plan is to install the 5.03 KDE CD and then when I start adding packages, to download them as archives before installing. That will save me having to download packages repeatedly as I try to learn Debian and allows me to build a nominal local repository. That is why I was curious about the 4 DVD set. I figured if I want a local repository of sorts, perhaps I ought to download the 4 DVDs (let wget pull the all-nighter rather than me :)). Still, at 4.4 GB per disk I probably would need a three or four nights to pull them in. Hence my interest in knowing the contents.

Sounds as though I'll be okay just installing the KDE CD and download/archive packages as I need them rather than swallow the whole enchilada. Especially as I am not a GTK fan.

Thanks for the help!