i'm in the process of downloading debian via bittorrent...
is it possible to do either of these things:

- burn several iso's to 1 dvd instead of lots of cds

- copy the iso's directly to the hard drive

thanks for your info.

The easiest thing to do if you want a DVD is to use jigdo to get the DVD image: http://www.debian.org/CD/jigdo-cd/ The DVD image is available for sarge.

I don't know what you mean by copy the iso's to the hard drive. You can put iso's on the hard drive, but that won't install Debian.

By the way, if the computer you are installing on has internt access, it is much easier to install using the netinst CD image from: http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/ it will install the base system and allow you to install everything else you need from the internet.

Also, there are many ways of installing Debian: http://www.linuxmafia.com/faq/Debian/installers.html

never mind. i'm not going near that net installer again
my first attempt at installing debian

thanks anyway

the netinstall is not that bad, if I recall correctly the reason you were having trouble last time was a faulty IDE cable, the netinstall is the best way to do the install, because once you install it you don't have to change your sources list. And the CDs only have one version of the packages. I'd still go for the netinstall

huh yea lol. true! but, it still scares me.
if you want to point me in the right direction?

see, last time i just got baffled by the amount of directories and files to choose from all with similar names. its just intimidating for a newb.

for example, this is where i think i should be getting the netinstall boot disk from:

http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/dist...in/disks-i386/

...but out of the 4 dirs in there, what do i choose? stuff like that. they don't make it easy for you.
+is it only the rescue bin i need, or do i need all those other ones. crazy.

(if anyone relpies, bare in mind i have 2 hard drives in this computer, one with xp.. and the other which is unpartitioned & ready for debian, i duno if that makes a difference- i just thought it would, messing with boot stuff and all.)

Click on this link: http://cdimage.debian.org/pub/cdimag...86-netinst.iso

It will download an iso file about 120 MB in size. Burn it onto a CD as described here: http://www.linuxiso.org/viewdoc.php/howtoburn.html

Make sure the BIOS of your computer is set to boot from CD first in the boot order, put the CD in and reboot.

You can follow the instructions on the screen. Hope that helps.

don't have a cd burner ;-)

well what d'ya know. i got a friend to burn the iso, and installed it. and now i get the choice of xp or debian on boot. thanks!

BUT, now XP is reliant on linux's grub for it to load. Eg, if i take out the linux HD, then XP wont run?

You can easily fix XP to boot again if you want to remove linux: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/d...d_tro_evwd.asp