So I don't really want to burn another CD for a number of reasons, is there a way to easily install Debian from another system?

Alternatively, is Lenny's installer the GUI one? And is there a liveCD version of Lenny out there?

And will it easily just install itself on one of my partitions and use the other one as /home??

EDIT: Just found Debian-Live, but there's only good Etch CDs; can I upgrade from Etch to Testing? Testing looks much more attractive than Etch all things considered, being pretty stable software and still up-to-date.

EDIT2: If I use the netinstall CD, will it allow me to use an alternate desktop during the install? Or do I install "Base system" or whatever and then at the command prompt install xfce4?

The best, and recommended, way to get a Lenny system is to install Etch first, then change your sources.list (all references to etch -> lenny) and do an update && dist-upgrade with aptitude (or apt-get, if you have to...)

Thanks for the advice, Dutch_Master. Better method to be honest, this way I can test out Etch and see if it's good enough...

What's Lenny like compared to Etch? To the end user, is it just Etch with newer software?

Oh, and is there any way to get Firefox back? It was difficult enough swaying my mom from IE to Firefox/Opera, don't want to push the enveloppe trying to explain to her Iceweasel is Firefox. Or maybe I'll just compile Firefox 3 when it comes out and solve my problems right there.

Never tried Lenny, I'll stick to Etch thankyouverymuch

There's now way (I know of) to get FF back into Debian. Given your remarks I suspect you already know why the Debian Project and the folks at Mozilla are at odds over this. Compiling is one option, but perhaps the backports guys may have a solution to your 'inconvenience'

...simply install debian/lenny ...it is more stable than some other stable distros ....( no hard feelings ), just install it and forget that you use " testing " debian , pretend that you have stable etch
Debian Lenny is stable. I would not recommend it for some critical servers, but for home environment you can use it. You can use it for servers but I think debian etch/stable is one fantastic os for everything you need ( almost everything )

Of course, I am debian fan, and it will be the only disro on every machine where I have power to decide....
debian rules.

Regards

The best? Recommended? There wouldn't be any Lenny install images (daily as well as weekly builds) if that was the official (or even widely-shared) view... As it happens, I just this week reinstalled from the 64-bit daily businesscard iso dated 6 March 2008 using the default installer -- just the base system, then changed sources.list to Sid and installed Desktop + Gnome tasks. It was a piece of cake! Installing Etch first seems a waste of time and bandwidth.

Hmm, well I think I'll go straight for Lenny then, considering it does get a fair deal of new software (need lots of newer stuff like gtk-gnutella, geany, pyglet, python-ctypes, etc.). When Lenny/Stable is released though, does my install turn into Debian Stable effectively? Does it have an upgrade manager I can use to jump ahead to the next "Testing" release?

But one more thing, does the netinstaller have the "installgui" instalelr now, and can I easily download another DE from it during the install? I don't want to install Gnome, then install Xfce, then remove gnome. =/

This is how I do it. You definitely don't want to install Gnome just to delete it in favor of KDE. There are lots of ways to install Debian, but it's really helpful to have some kind of informed plan of action before you get started.

Your installed distro will automatically become, and stay, stable if you call it "lenny" in your apt/sources.list. And if you call it "testing", then it will momentarily become stable at the moment Lenny becomes stable, thereafter it will become the new testing. So, take your pick.That too, although my advice is to become a little less insistent on a GUI approach... GNU/Linux users, especially the ones that populate Debian forums, have many uses for the CLI, if only because it saves them lots of time, and prevents RSI complaints to boot.

I haven't tried this in in the current etch netinstall.iso, but at one time you could use the netinstall.iso and use the expert install option which gave you the opportunity to choose stable, testing, or unstable during the install..

I used the net install iso for Lenny on Thursday, it worked like a charm:-) I've set my repos to testing. It is all good:-)

I think I might go with Etch at first... It's easy to upgrade to Lenny, isn't it?

Also, now that I'm thinking more clearly... I'm planning to let debian format the old Xubuntu partition, reuse the swap, but keep a /home with its /, and am planning to remount my old /home as being the new /home. I'm pretty sure I need to reuse the same user names, but what about passwords? And when I perma-mount /oldhome and set it as /home, do I delete the /(new)home and the files contained with in?