Earlier this week I was at a small Peer-to-Peer talk with a Linux enthusiast that recommended Debian. I am looking for the smallest installation with only Debian, KDE or Gnome (which I'd like to check out XPde later) and a few other essentials such as complete driver support and ofcourse APGET to get the other things I need. Which would be the flavor I should get for this? Vanilla? I'm a little lost, so any help would be appreciated.

Thank you very much.
p3ngu!n

There is Debian woody which is the stable version, sarge is the testing version and sid (still in development) is the unstable version. You'll find the newest (versions of) applications in sid which isn't as unstable as its name implies, I still have to see any crash or error with it. You can download a woody installation CD and then install it. I only used the first CD as I needed to upgrade as soon as I got it to the newest kernel and sid and did this via the internet (downloading and installing instead of from the extra CDs. You still might need to download some drivers but for essential hardware they're included cause it needs to install (hard disk, CD, floppy and video card, you have to upgrade the videocard driver to your brand probably once you got debian installed)

I recommend downloading the latest beta version of the Debian installer from here: http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/ The 110 MB CD image is what you want. It will install the basic Debian system with your choice of a 2.4.x kernel or 2.6.x kernel and set up APT. You can then pick and choose what you want to install from the Debian repositories using apt-get.

You can install Debian using the new Sarge installer beta4 (110 MB CD image):

http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

It installs just the base system (no X or the desktop stuff). Then you need to set up your network connection (if this is not done during installation), add a Debian package repository to /etc/apt/sources.list, and then use apt-get to update & upgrade your system, and to install x-window-system and kde (or gnome) plus other programs you want (Mozilla etc.) using apt-get.

Starting the Sarge installer CD with the "linux26" (without quotes) command will give you 2.6 kernel -- otherwise you'll get 2.4 kernel.

If this sounds intimidating, there are also easier alternatives available. MEPIS is a live CD that makes it easy to install a Debian system with KDE. The free version of Libranet is another newbie-friendly option.


PS. XPde is not yet very functional at the moment. If it ever evolves into 1.0 release, it will be one scary desktop environment.