hello all, i have downloaded a few different disto's in cd iso.
debian lenny had 30 some iso's, slackware 12.2 had 3 iso's all of which
were only 25-35mb in size, is that correct? also can they all be burnt onto one cd? thank-you in advance.

Slackware's ISOs should be bigger than that. The CD ISO files should be about 700 MB each and the DVD ISO should be 4 GB or so. Not sure about Debian, though. I think their smallest ISO is ~ 100 MB.

Yeah, those slackware ISO sizes aren't right at all, more around a full CD's worth. As for Debian, it looks as if you might have downloaded the Small distro, the first download section at http://www.debian.org/distrib/, under that you should see "Download larger CD/DVD image files, record and install using that media only." The first, small option, means you get only a base system and what you need to install more if you have an internet connection, so it downloads the packages you WANT versus giving you a CD of EVERYTHING to choose from.

For Debian's current stable release (Lenny), you only need the first CD image. Which is about 650MB. The other 29 CDs are not necessary as you can get the rest of the packages from the Internet.

There is also other Debian CDs available:
stable net install CD ~ about 50MB
stable business card CD ~ about 140 MB

The 2 above will be a more basic system requires more packages to be downloaded during install. Debian even has other images if you'd rather have KDE or XFCE as your window manager instead of the default Gnome window manager.

http://www.debian.org/CD/http-ftp/

You can always check your downloaded distribution by comparing its MD5SUM with the reported MD5SUM. Just look for a file with MD5SUM in its name in the download folder of the iso.

thank you for the help i will look for alternative downloads for the distros.can more than one iso be burnt to a cd if size permits?
also what is the difference between kde,xfce and gnome? which is better?

hello again, the iso's that i downloaded were torrents. i have found the
debian lenny iso's that are the right ones. the list of iso's that i have
to choose from are as follows
MD5sums.iso
MD5sums.sign
SHA1sums.iso
SHA1sums.sign
Debian-501-i386-cd-1.iso
same as above goes to -cd-31.iso
buisness card.iso
kde-cd-1.iso
netinst.iso
xfce+lxde.iso
update-5.0.1-i386-cd-1.iso
" "-cd-2.iso
" "-cd-3.iso

the majority of them are 600+mb's. which one(s) do i download for a full
copy/version. is there not some place to download a full copy all at once?

If you've got a reasonably fast broadband connection, get the netinst.iso.

I use the Debian netinst.iso for almost every Debian install I have ever done. Provided you have a broadband connection to the machine you are installing on it's the easiest way to go.

If you're looking for a full Install from CD I'd go with
debian-501-i386-CD-1.iso - this will have Gnome
or
debian-501-i386-kde-CD-1.iso - this will have KDE

These CDs should also install updated packages as they install so you have an up-to-date system.

As far as whether or not KDE or Gnome is better is up to you.

Also have you tried any live CDs such as Knoppix? You can try Linux without actually installing anything. The DVD version will have both Gnome and KDE if you wanna try out both desktops.